Spring Fever

It’s Wednesday 26^th February, it’s quarter past two in the afternoon and I’m sitting with the balcony door open listening to the sounds of the street.  The weather has been monumentally beautiful, nothing like anything I’ve experienced before at this time of year in Berlin.  The sky is a clear, luminous blue and there’s just a mere hint of a chill in the breeze to suggest that it is, after all, February and not April.

I’m just beginning to get over a virus that has knocked the stuffing out of me and kept me inactive for the past nine days.  I’ve no idea what it was, it just arrived last Monday morning in the form of a racking cough – one of those awful dry coughs that won’t let you get any sleep – and a debilitating lethargy.

For five days I never left the flat and by Thursday I was beginning to think that I belonged in the hospital.  I was incapable of even the slightest effort, to the point that even reading left me tired out and in the end I couldn’t even be bothered to pick up a book anyway.

So I spent all of last week dragging myself between bed and sofa.  I saw so much of the winter Olympics that for a while, every time I closed my eyes I saw people on skis.  I acquired a rudimentary understanding of sports that, until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t even known existed.  It reminds me of when I was seventeen and laid up with chicken pox whilst a snooker tournament was on.  I’d never seen a game of snooker up to that point but by the time I was back on my feet I felt that I knew the game inside out.

On Saturday, I took my first steps outside, venturing out to the Kaiser’s round the corner – a very small step, but the day before I wouldn’t have been able to contemplate it.  On Sunday I managed to get a little further.  We walked across Prenzlauer Berg as far as Zionskirchplatz where we stopped for coffee and cake.  My appetite hadn’t been very great all week so I did my heroic best with the cake but I was just glad to be able to get out, to watch the people sitting in the sunshine, reading their Sunday papers, walking their kids and dogs, meeting friends, generally to-ing and fro-ing.  After a leisurely hour, we walked slowly back, meandering across Helmholtzplatz which was thronging with people making the most of the outside tables at the cafes around the square.  Even though it tired me, the walk helped me feel connected once again to the amazing, irrepressible life of the city.

On Monday evening I managed to get down to Soho House (luckily the tram takes me door-to-door) to see Julia Franck, author of the prize-winning ‘The Blind Side of the Heart’, talking about her latest book.  I took a glass of white wine and nestled into a soft deep leather armchair and listened as she read an extract from the new book and spoke about her inspiration for both it and The Blind Side.  It was a lovely evening but I left almost straight away as I was beginning to feel fatigued and didn’t want to set myself back.

I’m getting there very slowly, venturing out for a daily walk.  I’m nowhere near able to contemplate getting on the bike just yet but the continued glorious weather is doing a lot to lift my spirits, and that, to me, is half the battle won.

She's Leaving Home

 

One of the first pictures I took - our building is the one in the middle

It is said that moving home is one of life’s most stressful events.  Moving country multiplies that stress factor a hundredfold.  The final weeks before our move were a whirlwind of activity.  I had to give eight weeks’ notice at work and, once I’d done that, it was all systems go.  Quitting my job – even with the knowledge that it probably wasn’t going to exist for much longer – was a massive step.  I came over to Berlin in September to find us a flat.  However, nearly all of the flats I’d planned to view fell through and in the end there was only one to look at.  Luckily, it was suitable and, not wanting this one to disappear, I contacted the agent as soon as I’d seen it to stake my claim.

We then had the business of trying to let out our house, getting odd jobs done – such as having a crumbly bit of garden wall repaired – and selling one of the cars (we decided to keep one at my sister’s for use when we visit).  We notified all of the relevant authorities and cancelled direct debits for things we had no further use for.

Since the seed of the idea to move had been planted in our minds back in May, we had drawn up endless lists and weekly planners.  The whole summer was taken up with planning and visiting special places.  In those final weeks after I'd given in my notice there seemed to be an intimidating number of things to take care of.  However, we ticked things off as we dealt with them and added others as they occurred.

Suddenly we were into the last couple of weeks.  We had been lucky enough to find a lovely tenant for the house and we took leave of our neighbours and the important people in our lives.  With two weekends left, we had some tattoos done and then wound things up in our respective jobs.

On Thursday 24^th October, I spent my last day in the job I’d had for eight years.  It was very emotional.  The job itself was often frustrating, almost always challenging but ultimately very rewarding.  I remain passionately committed to education’s role in the rehabilitation of offenders, but sadly the government and OLASS between them have smashed that particular avenue of reform.

On the morning of Friday 25^th October, I took Alan to Birmingham airport for his flight.  We’d decided that he would go ahead and sort the flat out, leaving me to take care of the last-minute jobs at home.

I spent the succeeding four days in a frenzy, cleaning everything in the house, defrosting the freezer and transporting things that I didn’t think our tenant would appreciate having around (film and concert posters, books and CDs and more clothing and footwear than I ever realised we possessed).  I also had three different leaving ‘do’s’, although one of those was a joint one with my boss who was leaving the following week.

On Tuesday 29^th October, I left the house for the last time.  I dropped a car load of stuff off at my sister’s house, had lunch with my mum and left for Birmingham where I spent the night at an airport hotel before my flight the following morning.  My journey over was a lot more eventful than Alan’s had been, and not in a good way.  I had a wheelie as hand luggage and an enormous and very heavy case to check in as hold baggage.  As I was attempting to drag this unwieldy monster onto the train at Burton station, a wheel caught on the step.  A well-meaning fellow passenger intervened and yanked the case onto the train, and in the process sheared the wheel completely off.  It was impossible to drag with just one so I had to carry it, but the weight meant that I could only manage a few steps at a time.   Being five foot one, eight and a half stone and a total stranger to weight training, it was some feat and by the time I’d gone the length of the concourse at Birmingham New Street to change trains, my arms were shaking and I was bathed in sweat.

The first thing I did when I finally got to my hotel room was go to the airport with my fingers crossed that the luggage shop would be open but I was disappointed.  I spent a terrible night thinking about how the hell I was going to get the case to the check in desk in the morning.  In the end I decided to leave my hand luggage in the hotel room, check the big one in and then return for the rest.  I tried dragging the case on its little plastic legs but it was still a mountain to climb.  By the time it was finally off my hands, the legs were shredded, it had one wheel, it was scuffed from being dragged about and was only fit for the bin, into which we ceremoniously dumped it once it had been unpacked. 

I boarded the flight tired and fraught but, as we were descending into Tegel, I looked out and saw the dome of the Carl Zeiss Planetarium down to the left.  I got my first attack of excitement at that moment because the planetarium is practically next door to our flat.  I looked along from it and, spotting our building I involuntarily clapped my hands like an overjoyed child.  Luckily, there were only about twelve other people on the plane and the man sitting closest to me was engrossed in his newspaper.  Ten minutes later we touched down.  Alan was there to meet me and help with the case which was by now looking embarrassingly destitute but I didn’t care.  I had arrived in Berlin.