Sunday’s Lost and Found
Posted: January 23, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, dead rats, Graffiti, photos 1 Comment »Here’s a few things I found this strange Sunday, just lying around Berlin. Good I always carry a camera.
The day started out like the opening pages of Camus’s The Plague. I walked down the stairs leaving the apartment and almost tripped over a dead rat. A way to start out the day, that. Nothing else could faze me. Not even the dog shit. Read the rest of this entry »
Color in a Plattenbau world
Posted: January 20, 2011 Filed under: Eggs, Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, GDR, German Democratic Republic, Ossis and Wessis Leave a comment »The word isn’t found in the Germany dictionary I currently possess, and I have met numerous West Germans unfamiliar with the term… yet, ask any Ossi and they will know.
Most people (most Westerners, Ossis don’t count as real people, at least according to Pop culture) if familiar with what they are, harbor unfavorable opinions of the cheaply made, usually very square and formerly very drab blocks of habitable concrete.
Plattenbau (roughly, ‘flat-building’) is the name for the pre-fab apartment houses typical to the ex-Warsaw Pact countries.
They are derided by comedians and laughed at by tourists, and seen as a sort of metaphor of the cheap and crumbling GDR communism.
Indeed, “Plattenbau” is rarely said lovingly. Read the rest of this entry »
Hunting light
Posted: December 15, 2010 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Karl Marx Allee, photos, winter, xmas Leave a comment »This is one dark mother of a winter.
I feel like the kid in that movie about the planet where the sun never shines except once a life-time it pokes through the clouds and he gets locked inside that day. About like that.
My eyes eventually adjust–distinguishing between the shades of gray…but my camera constantly whines about the lack of anything to reflect. So, my trusty tripod in hand, I bundled up and braved the tundra, hunting light. The slide show follows. Read the rest of this entry »
Falafelling our butts off
Posted: December 2, 2010 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, moving abroad, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure Leave a comment »Welcome to the first installment of the new ‘Eggs and Toast’ special segment: What to do in Berlin when it’s F-ing cold outside?
Today’s suggestion?
Head to Kreuzberg and drown ourselves in a generous quantity of falafel, a good helping of hummus and copious amounts of tea.
Nothing like a little spice for transporting the mind and soul to another place…a warmer, non-snowy place. Below is a ‘how to’ on the best way to devour said falafel. Read the rest of this entry »
Winter-r-r-r has arrived-d-d-d
Posted: December 2, 2010 Filed under: Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure, snow Leave a comment »Flop. I knew we should have moved to the Bahamas.
The snow started last night and didn’t stop until late this afternoon. Not quite a Colorado blizzard or nothing…but enough. About 8 inches of wet white stuff. And that would be fine…except Berliners are notorious for not shoveling their walks.
Last year, due to an unusually cold and snow winter, things got so bad that local news stations hosted neighborhood “ice-breaker” events to coax folks out to help for a chance to be seen on television.
The hip injury rate skyrocketed.
The mayor finally threatened citizens with tickets if they didn’t shovel, and was quoted in a bit of a gaff as saying “Berlin, after all, isn’t Haiti!”
Haitians, I guess, never shovel their snow.
Fighting over dead people
Posted: November 30, 2010 Filed under: Eggs | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, travel writing Leave a comment »Tried to take a leisurely stroll today around the St. Georgen and St. Petri cemeteries a few blocks away from our apartment.
The stroll became a brisk walk with lots of rubbing and blowing of hands and stomping of feet.
It’s savagely, painfully cold in Berlin today (zero Fahrenheit, a light wind and a humidity that slaps and scratches at any exposed skin.)
The dirt crunched beneath my shoes as I walked off the noisy street and through the gate into the quiet cemetery. A trace of two-day-old snow hid about in the leftover leaves of autumn lining the path, outlining the green vines and the bushes seperating plots. The cold had frozen solid the cement troughs for catching water from the grave-flower-watering faucets. Read the rest of this entry »
Another Great Adventure: Back from my T-Forced Internet Holiday.
Posted: November 25, 2010 Filed under: Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure | Tags: culture shock, moving abroad, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure, travel writing 2 Comments »It was our last step in moving in…
In this day and age, one isn’t set up in a new apartment until one has internet access. Usually a simple process. Germany is a developed country. A first world country. An industrialised nation.
We simply wanted internet. We have cell-phones. We can call or click, give ‘em our credit card number…the box comes a few days later in the mail , right?
Yes…well, yes and no. Here’s the story of our T-adventure and a slide show of what we did in the last six weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
Berlin autumn and apartment pictures
Posted: November 24, 2010 Filed under: Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, moving abroad, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure, travel writing Leave a comment »It was a beautiful fall in Berlin.
Being Germany, rain, it did…but there were several spells of sunny autumn days, and the leaves of the many trees in Berlin’s parks and along its many boulavards and canals and the River Spree reacted accordingly.
So far as the casa goes, a bed frame, Clothes cabinets, book shelves, etc. are the next step, as soon as we win the lotto. Not bad for just arrived with nearly nada.
Here’s a few pictures from Treptower Park and our apartment.
. Read the rest of this entry »
Hamburger special
Posted: October 28, 2010 Filed under: Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure | Tags: culture shock, moving abroad, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure Leave a comment »The Hamburger Special wasn’t so bad after all. As always a bit of chaos, the wee point of humping 600 pounds up 5 flights of stairs, but nothing insurmountable.
A quick video was all I got…should have taken more…but there’s a slide show too with a fine panorama picture or two to satiate any harbor hungerer out there. Read the rest of this entry »
The first morning…all moved in.
Posted: October 20, 2010 Filed under: Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure | Tags: Berlin, culture shock, moving abroad, Nadja and Andrew's Great Adventure 1 Comment »We did it. We have arrived. Except for the 16 boxes to arrive in Hamburg, all our stuff is moved. Below is a slide show. Read the rest of this entry »
