a couple of prenzle burgers

prenzle burgers!? that is too much.
no way - this arse above is too much.
For the record, we found this dimpled delight in a magazine - Berlin ain't that crazy anymore ... so far.

our street!

one week in berlin town - time for a roundup.

we've settled in quite quickly and easily. another small joyous experience in heating issues, with a maintenance man ringing our doorbell at 7am. at first we were all like, fucking hell, and we just ignored it, thinking that noone knows us, we don't wanna see anyone, they can piss off.
but after the 3rd (it was actually seven rings. I counted each one as I lay in bed weeping.) ring, i thought i better check and it turns out it was a dude with a brand new heater. well, it took many minutes of confusing pseudo-deutsch conversation, and a call to his boss, to ascertain he was indeed to replace the heater. i just thought he was here to fix the problem that was already resolved on friday. but, we have a brand new heater in the bathroom and it got us up early and ready to take on the day. Kent decided to let him in after the nice man gestured to the old heater, made a dripping motion, then a graphic explosion noise. Sure we got up early, but ended up mooching in pyjamas for around an hour and a half waiting for the heater to be installed, while some of us were BUSTING for the toilet.

seriously though - call for a tradie in berlin and expect them exactly ON time. this is a proposition that is foreign to me as an australian, but the two guys who have come have both been so punctual, it is scary. this second dude, was due between 7-12, which i figured out later, as he was from the actual heating company. the dude on friday was just the building manager. anyway - tradies here seem to kick ass.

let's put that whole thing to bed and turn our attention to the joys of berlin!


cafe culture

finding the perfect coffee is still a trick - but being melburnians, we expect no-one is gonna live up to our expectations. i mean, how could they?
nonetheless, there's a fantastic cafe scene here. the above image is about 5 mins from our joint, sitting in the beautiful sunshine we have been blessed with almost everyday. it's still, like, 3 degrees, but the sun is a wonderful gift. And it is WARM!! The air is positively spring-like, not spring-like as in boingy, though it does have a bit of that going on, but spring as in spriiing (waves arms in the air)!! The coffee in this picture actually tasted a bit like poo, but we have found an alarming amount of awesome cafes almost at every corner. It is still a rather exciting challenge to figure out what each cafe's version of a latte is (some are cappuccinos, some come in milkshake glasses, most of them are like massive soup bowls. I have taken to asking for eine kliene [small] everything and hoping that it will be normal size.) - all in all, it sure beats a coffee in Bendigo.


we have done a rather small amount of sightseeing, but then have become distracted by food.



This is the lovely Renee and myself after finally getting our souvlakis, or here they are durums, from apparently the best in Berlin, Mustafa's. All those people behind us are in a LINE. Yep, we waited a hearty half an hour (at the least) in line for one of these bad boys. Mine was a foot long and I ate it ALL (There is seriously something in the water here, I can't stop) and it was so good that I accidentally ate a bit of the foil too - I digested a fair amount before I realised what was going on. But don't worry guys, I am ok.

thankfully, one of the best things about our flat is the ability to cook again. well, for me it's being able to eat lucy's cooking again!


brilliant!

wow - just look at my cafe-sandwich-making skills!

oh, and we've even been to a dinner party - at a friend's flat in kreuzberg - our artist friend renee (see durum picture at mustafa's). great food was had there. their flat is like what you'd expect a berlin style squat to be, complete with shower in the kitchen, and toilet in a cupboard, outside, in the hallway. weird.
oh, and it's kitted out with kinky gay sex imagery. Stef (Renee's boyfriend) and Renee, are, to say the least, not thrilled with the homoerotic toilet situation.


but our place is all comfy and set up now. in fact, it's becoming rather productive as we plow into some artworks.


This is the outside of our building. Ugly huh? But if you look closely, you can see my lovely glass of tulips sitting in the window, cheering it all up nicely.

here's me drawing up a large scale version of a great collage that lucy made.
actually, here's her original:

pretty cool huh.

anyway, i thought i'd scale it up and then go out and paste it up on a wall somewhere.

i'll grab a photo of it once it's up.

there's quite a bit of street art around town. lots of terrible graffiti tags too. overall berlin looks pretty 'ghetto' but is not without its visual charms.


Yeeah I was!


it may be hard to make that out, but that's an elephant made out of garbage bags.


ooh - and here's our neighbourhood:


this is our street. we're down on the left, probably about where that yellow station wagon is. the street was just sweeped and 'cleaned' (more like gently lathered with dirty poo-water and an old soviet-era mop) HAHAHA so true. i'm banking on spring turning our street trees into delightful green pleasures.

train lines about 50m from our flat. we cannot, for the life of us, hear a single train, even though one goes passed every 3 minutes or so.

oh - and it might not be possible to make it out, but this house,
2 doors down from us, is riddled with bullet holes.
historic!