New Life!!

Amazingly, it's now nearly three weeks since I quit my job in prison education and almost two weeks since I moved to Berlin with my husband Alan to fulfil a long-held dream.
The first week was largely spent catching up on sleep - I can't remember the last time I slept for eight hours a night and after eight years in a great but demanding job I had been feeling pretty burned out.  We also spent our first week finding our feet here - even though the flat we're renting is in a part of Berlin that we know well, it's different being here as a resident as opposed to being a holidaymaker. 
I love our flat.  It's right on Prenzlauer Allee, across the road from the S-Bahn station and next door to the planetarium and the Ernst Thalmann Park.  I love watching the street life from our little balcony and the fact that I can glimpse the Fernsehturm through the half-naked branches of the tree outside.
Last Friday we bought a pushbike each.  I haven't ridden a bike in decades and was surprised at how bad I was at it.  However, a quick pedal around the park and it all came back to me.  I must say that having a bike really opens the city up.  Even though I love walking and can happily spend hours on foot here, there is so much ground that you can cover by pedal power.  I am desperately unfit though and certainly no Victoria Pendleton.
On Saturday we biked up to the station at Bornholmer Strasse, a former checkpoint on the border between East and West Berlin.  It was the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and this was the place where the first people entered West Berlin.  To ride over the bridge now from Prenzlauer Berg into Wedding you wouldn't even register that it had once been an international frontier, and not only that, but the dividing line between the two dominant political ideologies of the twentieth century.
Saturday was also the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht - the night during which the Nazis smashed up Jewish owned businesses across the city.  In remembrance of this shops in the main shopping areas displayed' broken window' overlays. 
On Sunday we had more Berlin Wall.  We cycled down to Friedrichshain where we had a stroll around the flea markets at Boxhagener Platz and Revaler Strasse before riding down to the magnificent East Side Gallery.  This is a stretch of the Berlin Wall which is supposed to be a protected monument but there doesn't seem to be that much protection going on.  A chunk has already been sacrificed for the monstrous 02 Arena and further sections are under threat because rapacious property developers insist on trying to build yuppie apartments where they are least wanted.
After a bracing ride down the length of the gallery, we began the climb back up to Prenzlauer Berg and a well-deserved coffee and cake break at Atopia on Prenzlauer Allee, which is so cozy and laid-back inside, I almost fell asleep.