It’s a sad Sunday – our last day in the Prenzlauer Allee
flat and the end of the first part of our odyssey. I will miss this flat – I love the fact that
it’s at the front of the house, and I’ve spent many hours either out on the balcony
or inside with the doors open, just to feel that connection to the street with
its constant procession of people, traffic and swishing trams. The tree directly outside our window is now finally
in leaf – I was beginning to wonder whether it was dead as every other tree
along here has been green for weeks.
I’ve not been able to see the Fernsehturm from my balcony since the
leaves came out and now this one is beginning to obscure my view of the späti
across the road with its abundant display of fruit and vegetables. When I first got here it was the day before
Halloween and the city was decked out in its Autumn finery – our tree still had
a few brown leaves clinging tenaciously on, but they soon succumbed as the
winter unfolded. Actually, winter was
fairly innocuous by Berlin standards – there were a couple of weeks of minus
thirteen-fifteen temperatures at the end of January, but apart from that it was
nowhere near as murderous as it could have been. The snow arrived and disappeared, and now
it’s beautiful spring.
View from the balcony one January morning
Tomorrow we’ll be moving to Kanzowstrasse which is literally
just across the road so at least we’ll be staying in the neighbourhood that has
become so familiar to us. I wouldn’t
have minded living in a different area of the city but finding a flat anywhere
proved next to impossible. We found the
new one almost by accident – a good job really or we might have been sleeping
on the street tomorrow.
Although I’m sad about leaving here (it was inevitable that
I’d feel that way – it’s in my nature to do so), I’m looking forward to the
move, and there have been one or two things in the Prenzlauer Allee flat that
I’ve had to accept rather than enjoy. We
all have different tastes and living with someone else’s furnishings and
gew-gaws has made me very aware of what I like and what I don’t like. Two of the walls in the bedroom, for example,
are painted a claustrophobic shade that I can only describe as dark teal. The depressing ambience created by such an
unpleasant colour was not helped by the fact that the duvet covers were all
brown and black, so one of the first things we did after settling in was go out
and buy some white bedding which at least helped lift the gloom. Also - and I find this both baffling and
disturbing - there are no curtains or
blinds in the flat. That’s not a problem
at the front as I always like to see outside – back home in the UK, I only
pulled down the blinds last thing at night, even in the depths of winter. However, the bedroom is overlooked by about
twelve other flats around the hof and as I’m not an exhibitionist, a solution
had to be found. This came in the form
of several metres of fabric from the Turkish Market which I inexpertly
fashioned into a blind and stuck up with double-sided tape. It proved a rather inelegant expedient and a
bit of an irritation as it falls down on a regular basis but at least it
enabled us to preserve our modesty.
Secondly, for a small flat, it has a staggering amount of
bric-a-brac including a practically museum-sized inventory of coloured
glassware: a collection of bottles in blue glass, four or five vases in brown
glass, assorted tealight holders in purple glass, plus odd bits and pieces in
red, green and more purple. I consigned
all but the tealight holders to a cupboard in the kitchen. For me, unnecessary ornamentation is just
clutter – I’m not given to adorning every shelf, windowsill or nook and cranny
with pots and vases.
Much more of a concern than all the nick-nacks though has
been the fact that we have no internet here and have had to rent a surfstick
for the last six months. This, at times,
has been a real nuisance as the connection is very sporadic – on countless
occasions, one of us has been in the middle of an online task and the service
has been lost. When we’ve had to do
anything for which a reliable connection is essential, we’ve taken the laptop
to a bar or café and worked there.
Still, internet problems and glassware aside, it’s a lovely
little flat – an Altbau with high ceilings and polished wooden floors – and
it’s in a fantastic location at the less gentrified end of Prenzlauer Berg (if
such a thing is possible).
I'm relieved that the new flat has wi-fi, so we won’t have to
trundle off to a cafe every time we need to do something important. It’s on the ground floor but it has its own
little terrace so we’ll still have an outdoor space – a very important
consideration for me. It doesn’t
overlook the street but is next to the S-Bahn tracks. I don’t think proximity to the trains will be
a problem as I grew up in a house that had a railway line practically at the
bottom of the garden. As the flat is
only a few hundred yards from where we live now, we will be able to move quite
easily – I think three or four trips on foot with our cases should do it.
So, as the second part of our Berlin adventure is about to
begin, it’s time to take stock and look at what I’ve achieved so far:
Even though I’ve not been able to find a job, I’ve completed
the first level of a German language course and embarked on a TEFL course for which
I’ve now submitted and passed three projects (it’s ironic that I’m now a
distance learner as, before the move, I spent eight years facilitating distance
learning opportunities for prisoners).
I’ve also taken two sessions at the language exchange we’ve been
regulars at since we arrived, and Darren, the regular teacher, has asked me if
I would take the session once a month.
This has been hugely enjoyable.
The participants – in normal circumstances my fellow tandem speakers –
have been very supportive and it’s helped keep my teaching skills from getting
rusty.
I’ve become a convert to social media, having opened a
Twitter account and started a blog. This
might sound like it’s all a bit late to the party but working in the prison, my
colleagues and I were always warned about the security implications of social
media, so I just didn’t bother. That’s
all changed now and I’ve even had an article published on a football
website. I’ve also begun to concentrate
in earnest on getting some writing done.
I’ve had four partially completed novels on the back-burner for about
ten years and never really had the time to get any of them anywhere near
acceptable.
I’ve been to a few literary events, including a couple of
Dialogue Books’ literary lounges at Soho House and the launch of the second
series of tiny publications from Readux Books.
Meeting other writers has been an absolute delight and has also given me
the confidence to apply myself in greater earnest to my own writing
projects. I’m now busily trying to get
one particular piece completed, but I’ve a long way to go yet, especially with
so much else to concentrate on.
But Berlin cannot help but inspire creativity –
it is a constant shot in the arm and living here has made me realise how badly
I want to stay. Our initial plan was to
live here for a year. We managed to
extend this by three months, so our contract for the new flat runs until the
end of January rather than the end of October.
I always loved Berlin as a visitor and was prepared for the possibility
that its appeal might wear off if I came to live here full time. In fact the opposite has happened – to have
to move back to the UK would seem almost like a death sentence now. We have started to build a life for ourselves
here; we have met some wonderful people – Germans and ex-pats alike – and need
only to find some form of employment that will enable us to stay here
permanently.
