Completing the Picture

For the final instalment of my 'One Year On' trilogy, I had a trawl back through the hundreds of photos I've taken since landing here on 30th October last year and selected one for each month:

November

 

This was one Sunday after we'd been for a lazy brunch buffet at a café on Helmholzplatz

I spent most of the month getting used to my new environment, we bought bikes and cycled to parts of the city we hadn't been to before, we started attending the language exchange and I enrolled on a German course.

December

 

There are Christmas markets and there are Christmas markets but there is only one Bite Club

December in Berlin is all about Christmas.  I think we went to practically every one of the markets.  We had a little trip to Mallorca and we were in England for the day itself but were back in the city in time for the mayhem of New Year's Eve, which we spent in the company of a honeymooning Australian Green Party MP and his new bride.  Our culinary adventures included the Bite Club at Urban Spree and our first visit to Street Food Thursday at Markthalle Neun.

January

 

The snow finally arrived - I couldn't resist taking a picture of this little guy when I saw him sitting outside a café on Kollwitzplatz

February

 

Highlight of the month was the Berlinale which I've talked about in a previous post.  I didn't take an awful lot of pictures during this month; I spent one week of it laid up with a horrid lurgy for a start. 

I did however discover this interestingly-named beer at Leibhaftig in Metzer Strasse.

March

 

What do you do with an old coffee machine? Stick daffodils in it of course!  A perfect example of the Berlin culture of recycling and re-purposing, outside Café Sloerm on Danziger Strasse.

We both had our birthdays in March and the weather really picked up.  I went to a couple of literary events too in this month and did my first session at the language exchange.

April

 

The 'Party Tram' making its way along Kastanienallee

We moved to our current flat at the end of April and I started my TEFL course.  Apart from a visit from my mum at the beginning of the month, and a very chilly Easter, April was fairly low-key.

May

 

There's always a lot going on in May, not least the festivities on May Day itself.  This picture, of the police harassing buskers in the Mauerpark, was taken one lovely Sunday afternoon.  By the end of the month there seemed to have been an exceptional number of Bank Holidays, the final one being 'men's day' in which groups of men apparently bond over outdoor activities (I take that to mean they go to beer gardens).


June

 

This goth market, called the Dunkelmarkt (dark market), took place on the first Sunday in June in the building across the road from our flat.  Ever curious, I had to go in for a nose around.  It naturally resembled a crypt inside but out in the yard there was the curious sight of a goth barbecue taking place.

The World Cup started this month.  We got to see a game at the 'Wohnzimmer' in the Alte Foersterei and I hooked up with a tandem partner in a bid to improve my German.  I also submitted a 30-page piece of creative writing to publishers Jonathan Cape who were having an open submissions month.  I never got to hear back from them but I wasn't really expecting to.  For me it was more of an exercise in discipline and working to a deadline.

July

 

Walking home one night, we came across this fashion show which disrupted the traffic

 in Schoenhauser Allee.  It seemed so typically Berlin to stage it in a street with four lanes

of traffic and two tram lines. 

For me July was all about writing.  At the beginning of the month I went on a one-day writing workshop in Kreuzberg and at the end of the month I went to the Reader Berlin's literary festival at Gorgast.  In between I wrote practically non-stop, finding shady cafes to sit in as the weather was brutally hot.

The World Cup finished and the city went wild.  During this month we cycled quite a few times down to Moabit to assist a friend in need whose knee operation had coincided with the acquisition of his new dog.  We rode down a couple of times a week to walk the pooch Norbert (who is also going to be our guest this Christmas).

August

 

Everything seems to move outdoors in the summer months, including the cinemas. 

We went to see a film at this 'freiluft' kino at the delightful Insel Berlin,

an island in the middle of the Spree accessed via an almost impossibly steep footbridge.

September

 

Our dog-owning friend was up and about by September and introduced us to the weekend Thai food Market at Fehrbelliner Platz - an amazing experience.  The local Thai community occupy the park, setting up makeshift food stalls with little more than a few mats and a wok but managing to rustle up some fantastic fare.  This lady was doing a brisk trade in fried bugs.

Back on European culinary territory, we had our wedding anniversary this month and went to the ambient Poulette restaurant in Knaackstrasse, opposite the Wasserturm.  It's French and it's lovely.

Another September highlight was going to a screening of some old Stasi training films at the Lichtblick Kino, hosted by Exberliner magazine.  The films, from the Stasi archive and never seen by the public before, were fascinating and there was a discussion afterwards of the Stasi's methods and of films such as The Lives of Others, which drew on the archive films for some of its material.

My pick of September's literary 'soirees' was the first of Katy Derbyshire's 'Parallel Lines' salons at ACUD on Veteranenstrasse.  This excellent venue also hosted an 'Open House' one weekend - one of our friends was performing a DJ set so we went along to offer our support.

Other events in this busy month included the 'Popfest' at the Gruener Salon and my first visit of the season to watch Union Berlin beat RB Leipzig at the Alte Foersterei.


October

 

The summer had its swan song a couple of weekends ago with temperatures in the mid-twenties on the Sunday.  We had a Berlin epic that day, visiting all of our favourite Sunday places. 

In Zionskirchplatz, en route to the flea market at Arkonaplatz after coffee, cake and wine at Weinerei, I stopped to take this picture of the fallen leaves.

So, one year down.  It's been so eventful, and I've had to leave so much out (otherwise this post would go on forever).  I just wonder what the coming year will bring...