January

On Saturday I woke up find to a dusting of snow on the ground so I set off on a ramble around Prenzlauer Berg to take some photos, along with every amateur photographer in the city it appeared.  Berlin is irresistibly romantic in the snow and it provided a perfect end to what can be a desolate month.  By the time February arrives I often have the feeling of having survived something.  It’s as though all the health drives and ‘dry January’ initiatives we subject ourselves to are a form of self-imposed punishment for the revelry of the previous weeks.  Although I despair at the rampant commercialism of Christmas, I do love the event itself and the sense of goodwill it seems to foster.  The atmosphere during advent has always felt quite magical to me. I’m also a sucker for fairy lights and sparkly things.  Once it’s all over and my fellow humans begin dieting, abstaining and facing up to the credit card bills, I feel a strange yet not unpleasant post-festive melancholy, a state for which there should definitely be a German word.

This year January proved quite eventful for me in one way or another.  A few weeks ago I had an interview with the owners of a bookshop and publishing venture that’s due to open in Neukölln.  We met at a café in Weserstrasse and had such a positive and laid-back discussion, that I ended up badly wanting the job.  I was told that I’d be notified a week later but the following Friday I got in touch and proposed working for them on a month's free trial.  I reasoned that I had nothing to lose; if they were thinking of giving me the job then they’d save a month’s wages, and if they weren’t they might at least think about taking me up on the offer so I'd get a chance to prove myself.  I received a very friendly reply saying that they were still interviewing and would let me know the outcome in time.  No reference was made to my proposal so I deduced that one decision they had made was that the job was definitely not going to be mine.  I was disappointed and I couldn’t help wondering if my age had been a factor. 

I’d also applied that week for a job as a tour guide and received a patronising rejection telling me that although I had ‘so much to offer’ they could not proceed further with my application.  In a rare fit of bolshiness, I challenged this, asking why, if they really did believe I had so much going for me, was I not worth interviewing, and their non-committal reply only strengthened my suspicions that they considered me too old for their enterprise.  I think they were probably looking for people to conduct pub crawls rather than in-depth insights into the Cold War, and see bar-hopping as a young person’s pursuit. 

So I was stunned when, on Monday, I opened an e-mail from the bookshop owners asking if I’d be interested in working with them in the publishing side of the business.  I’m not sure what the work entails but I’m overjoyed and can’t wait to find out.

From a creative point of view, January was a very productive month.  What I'm now beginning to think of as 'my novel' reached 70,000 words and I completed a piece of writing about Weissensee that was published on the travel website Slow Travel Berlin.  I’d got a sizeable collection of photographs of the area from past visits but I decided to have another wander around to take some more and to check that everything I wanted to write about was still actually there (it’s amazing how things appear and disappear in this city).  I spent an unexpectedly warm and sunny afternoon gathering snaps; at one point the camera on my phone suffered the same malfunction as it had at the Lenin-Liebknecht-Luxemburg demo so I had to use the ‘proper’ camera.  Alan and I also took a sleepy tram ride early one morning to get some pictures of the lake at daybreak.  Although I didn’t use any of the pictures for my article, it was worth the effort for a very atmospheric dawn walk.  We found the lake silent and still, reflecting orange globes of light from the lamps along the surrounding pathways.  The only signs of life were ducks and a red squirrel and, near the bank, a group of swans.  Before long, lights began to appear in the windows of nearby houses, visible through the naked branches of the trees.  A drizzly rain started to fall which seemed to rinse the blackness from the sky.  We got back on to Berliner Allee, now shimmering in the headlights of the morning traffic and by half past eight we were warming up with steaming hot coffee. 

 

Daybreak at the 'White Lake'

Socially, January was quite a busy month, beginning with a long, lazy brunch with friends Abby and Albert and ending with a birthday party in a tiny flat on Schivelbeiner Strasse.  In between we were entertained by a couple of twenty-something friends who invited us to their flat in Moabit for an evening of curry, conversation, beer and wine and a bit of guitar playing.  I’ve also acquired a new tandem partner in Heidi from the language exchange as my other partner seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.  We had our first session at Heidi’s flat in Schöneweide and spent an agreeable afternoon drinking tea, eating the last of her home-made Christmas cookies and helping each other with our respective languages while snow swirled outside the window.

I’m now getting February under way by attempting to secure Berlinale tickets, reading the Orhan Pamuk book I bought the other day, working on a piece about Prenzlauer Allee, and building on the 70,000 words of my novel.  On Sunday I learned that I’ve made the shortlist of The Reader’s short story competition and I was so delighted that I don’t think I stopped smiling all the rest of the day.