Back to School (Again)

 

The Margarete Steffin Volkshochshule, Lichtenberg

 

When I first came to Berlin, one of my goals was to achieve a basic competence in the German language.  I enrolled on a course at my nearest Sprachschule and completed four modules, to A2.2. I found the course incredibly tough and there were elements that I just couldn’t comprehend so I decided to take a break and go back over everything I’d done before continuing further. I was also running out of spare cash at the time and the modules were quite expensive. It was around this time that I started teaching at the language exchange and I also embarked on an online TEFL course which I hoped would result in more teaching work. I was writing a lot as well so my commitment to learning the language began to falter and I never did open my books for my intended recap.

Then, last November, a Spanish friend told me about the Integrationskurs which can be taken in any of the city’s Volkshochschulen. I already knew about the course but I wasn’t aware that for EU citizens it’s possible to take it at a reduced fee and receive a 50% refund on completion. The course comprises an intensive German language element up to B1.2 level and an integration module focusing on German society, culture and law.  I went down to the Volkshochschule in Lichtenberg and took a test which determined that I was at level A2.2 and then, just before Christmas, I received the official approval to take the course at the special rate.

One snowy afternoon in January, as I was on my way home from a session with my tandem partner, I decided to call in at the Volkshochschule to find out when the next course would be starting. I’d decided to start with the A2.1 module as I’d forgotten most of what I’d learnt two years before. I had imagined that I would be placed on a waiting list and would have some weeks to prepare so I was slightly stunned when I was asked to come back at 9.00 the following morning as the next course was to start then and a place was available. So I paid the module fee and at 8.30 the next morning I found myself rumbling through a wintry East Berlin landscape, on an M8 tram bound for the school, A4 pad and pencil case at the ready.

The lessons run from 9.00 until 1.15 daily and each module takes four weeks to complete. There is also about two hours’ worth of homework to do every day so by the time I’ve written up my class notes and done my homework, most of the day has disappeared. It’s intensive and time-consuming but I’m learning much more than I did at the Sprachschule as the modules there only took two weeks to complete and nothing really sank in.

In true DDR fashion, the school is named after Margarete Steffin, a writer and actress who worked (and had an affair) with Bertolt Brecht. Our teacher is also a DDR original, and Lichtenberg native. In the first week she set up a ‘Kaffee Ecke’ bringing in coffee, sugar, a range of teas and a kettle so that we can make our own drinks as the school doesn’t have a canteen. We pay 50 cents a day, which means that besides the extra convenience, it’s a lot cheaper than fetching our break-time coffee from the bakery across the road. She also regularly brings in cakes and biscuits for us all.

My classmates are from more proletarian backgrounds here too. At the Sprachschule my fellow students were Prenzlauer Berg professionals: graphic artists, architects, and even a composer.  Everyone spoke English so that was the language we used during our breaks in the nearby bakery. The students at the Volkshochschule are mainly from the Vietnamese and Eastern European communities of Lichtenberg. There are a couple of Syrian refugees, two Italians, and a beer-loving Japanese student. Hardly anyone speaks English which forces us to converse in German and I’m finding that much more beneficial.

The A2.1 module ended last Tuesday and our teacher had asked that we each bring an item of food typical to our native country. Once the blind panic had subsided, I decided to make a bread and butter pudding. I reasoned that no one would be any the wiser if it failed to turn out as it should but I bought a couple of large bags of salt and vinegar crisps as a stand-by. The lesson finished early and we each brought our offerings to the table. There was home-made pizza, all manner of sweet items and some delicious salads. My favourite was a Ukrainian speciality made with potatoes and beetroot.

Two days later, the A2.2 course started and a few newcomers joined the group. On Wednesday it was our teacher’s birthday and she brought in cakes for everybody so once again a bout of communal feasting took place. During that day’s break, one of our classmates organised a collection for her and popped across to the shopping centre for some chocolates and flowers.

When this module finishes I won’t be able to start the next one as I’ll be in England for three weeks and, although the school will be closed for one of the two Easter holiday weeks during that time, I’ll still miss too many lessons so I’ll have to start the B1.2 module in May with a different teacher and new classmates. I’ll be sorry not be a part of this little group any more but I’m looking upon it as another new adventure!

The stars look very different...

 

David Bowie’s death on 10^th January was one of those events that make the world seem a very different place afterwards.

Two days earlier, on Friday 8^th January, Bowie celebrated his 69^th birthday by releasing an album called ‘Blackstar’.  It was a fine start to the eventful weekend I had planned. That afternoon I travelled down to Shakespeare and Sons on Warschauer Strasse to meet a friend I’d been corresponding with since last autumn when he sent me a copy of his self-published novel to review.  We spent the afternoon discussing our writing and our sources of inspiration. My friend said that the idea for his novel had begun to ferment as he listened to the music of Depeche Mode and wanted to produce a story with a soundtrack. We also talked about the role that Berlin plays in fostering creative activity. Neither of us knows for certain how long we will be here for and we both feel that leaving the city would have a detrimental effect on our productivity. 

That evening Alan and I met a couple of friends at a pizza restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg and I had what is probably my most surreal Berlin experience to date (edging out last summer’s Jarvis Cocker chocolate cake incident) when I walked in and spotted Blixa Bargeld tapping out an imaginary tune on a table-top while waiting for his takeaway order. It provided us with the perfect excuse to spend much of the next day listening to Einstürzende Neubauten.

On Sunday 10^th we attended the Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Lenin Demo in Friedrichshain, walking the two kilometres from Frankfurter Tor to the Socialist Memorial in Lichtenberg.  In the evening we decided to stay in and listen to music. I played a couple of Bowie tracks and we spoke briefly about him, about his music and his influence.  I remember entertaining a fleeting anxiety about him based on nothing more than his age (I’d played a Velvet Underground track and thought of Lou Reed, who died the weekend we moved to Berlin, at the age of 71. The music world had also recently lost Lemmy, aged just 70).  In the morning of course, I awoke to the news that Bowie had died.  

My first thought was to send a message to my old friend Ian. Although I’ve hardly seen him during the last thirty years, I still think of him every time I hear an early Bowie track.  Ian was the first friend I ever made when, at the age of three, we became next-door neighbours.  When we were kids he was obsessed by Bowie and was forever singing ‘Starman’.  As teenagers, while I listened to Abba, he bought albums by The Beatles and Kraftwerk and tried his best to broaden my musical horizons. We spent much of that day reminiscing via Facebook messages about our childhood escapades, including an adventurous bus trip to Derby as twelve-year-olds to buy The Beach Boys’ ‘Good Vibrations’.  It was only during the 80s when I went through a phase of listening to little more than Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ album that I began to fully appreciate his talent.

I also exchanged messages that day with my friend Abby who, the previous Friday, had toasted Bowie's birthday by raising a glass in front of the poster on her wall - the iconic white face with lightning-bolt make-up.

Many music business deaths have occurred in shocking or sensational circumstances. I was sad when Amy Winehouse died and stunned by the murder of John Lennon. But I genuinely grieved – am still grieving – over Bowie's gentle passing. It’s possible that being in Berlin has something to do with it; Bowie is loved here. His productive (and redemptive) stay in 1976-78 is legendary.  Shortly after the news broke on Monday morning, candles and floral tributes began to accumulate around the doorway of Hauptstrasse 155, where Bowie had shared a flat with Iggy Pop.  His death was the top story on the German news channels.  One politician even credited him with bringing down the Berlin Wall, such is his reputation in the city’s pantheon of ‘Heroes’.

On Saturday, under a brooding sky, we made the journey over to Hauptstrasse to pay our respects. It’s an unassuming, nondescript street and I’d only been there once before, having incorporated a visit to Bowie's former address into a walk which included the Winterfeldplatz Market and the Kleistpark. It was incredibly moving to see the entrance to what is now a dental surgery festooned with flowers, flickering candles, and messages from mourning fans.

 

There is talk of renaming Hauptstrasse ‘David Bowie Strasse’ in his honour.  I hope it happens.

The shock of the new

 

A wintry Prenzlauer Allee

I always find it a bit of a shock when the first ‘normal’ day of the year comes around, the decorations are taken down and the season of goodwill finally comes to an end.  I love the festive period and in Berlin it feels extra special to me, from the last week in November when the Christmas markets open until the mayhem of New Year’s Eve.

Our seasonal preparations began the day the markets opened when we travelled to Poland with a couple of friends, catching a train from Alexanderplatz for the hour-long journey to Frankfurt (Oder).  We walked through the town and across the river to Slubice where the shops were stocked with Christmas treats.  It was midday when we arrived so we settled in for a long, lazy lunch in the Ramzes restaurant.  On the ground floor of a hotel, the restaurant has an Egyptian theme but an international menu with gigantic portions.  A starter of bruschetta was enough for three of us and the fish burger main course I’d ordered came with two burgers and a mountain of chips.  By the time we left it was already beginning to get dark so, warmed by the couple of bottles of Rioja we’d drunk, we gravitated towards the shops where we stocked up with vodka, sausages, lebkuchen, and smoked cheese.  The falling snow as we walked back over the river gave the evening an atmospheric ‘Cold War’ feel, and provided the perfect ending to a memorable day. Back at Alexanderplatz, the market was in full swing but we were sleepy from travelling and a heavy lunch so we took the tram home.

I then had a couple of insanely busy weeks completing batches of writing for the travel website.  Once the last batch had been submitted, I made the dreaded trip to the Finanzamt to apply for my freelance tax number.  In the event the two members of staff who dealt with my application were friendly and helpful and I left feeling very upbeat and ready to devote myself to Christmas-related activities (visiting the markets, shopping for gifts, and decorating the flat).

 

The Lucia Weihnachtsmarkt in the Kulturbrauerei

 

On the second Sunday of the month we went to see a film called Mietrebellen (Rent Rebels) in Karl Liebknecht Haus, the headquarters of Die Linke.  We’d heard about it through a Facebook group called Linke International, for Berlin-based Ausländer of a left-wing persuasion.  The film began by highlighting the case of a 67-year-old woman who had been forcibly evicted from her flat and died two days later of cold.  It then followed the activities of various tenants’ rights groups as they protested against rent increases and attempted to disrupt forced evictions.  After the screening there was a discussion with one of the filmmakers, Matthias Coers who rejected the gentrification argument, blaming property speculators for Berlin’s current housing problems.

The following evening I met up with some of the group again at the Berliner Ensemble to see the legendary Nina Hagen singing the songs of Bertolt Brecht.  I’d never seen a performance here, even though I’d visited the theatre the very first time I came to Berlin, so it was a long overdue experience.  We met before the concert in the Kantine just behind the theatre.  It’s a basement café which resembles a social club but with a theatrical clientele (standing next to me at the bar was an actor I’ve seen in a couple of German TV programmes, including Tatort).  Inside the theatre, images of Brecht were projected onto a screen over the stage and Hagen performed her own musical arrangements of his poetry over two hour-long sets.

On the last Sunday before the holidays we caught up with our friends Abby and Albert at a festive edition of the Breakfast and Vinyl Market at Markthalle Neun.  We had drinks and tapas before settling in at the bar in the corner to listen to the music and enjoy an excellent Bloody Mary. Two days later we flew to England to spend a cosy Christmas at my sister’s house, returning in time for a New Year’s Eve party with friends at the Mauersegler. 

 

Christmas Lunch

 

Now it’s all over, the stollen has been eaten and the streets are full of discarded Christmas trees, I’d like to wish everyone einen guten Rutsch ( a good ‘slide’ into the new year). Happy 2016!

Friday Favourites

Today I took one of my favourite Friday afternoon Berlin rambles.  Alan and I met our friend Gareth in Schoenhauser Allee and we went to Der Fischladen where Alan and Gareth had fish and chips and I went for the day's special of Gravadlax with Kartoffelpuffer and a large glass of white wine.  Once we'd eaten, the boys set off for the last Union game before the winter break and I headed in the other direction towards Schoenhauser Ecke, which I've always thought of as the beating heart of Prenzlauer Berg.

 

With five roads, three tram lines and an U-Bahn station, there's always plenty of activity here.

 

 

 

Looking towards Eberswalder Strasse Station

 

From there I walked down Kastanienallee, a street that many like to criticise but for which I have a long-standing affection.

 

 

The Prater

 

At Schwedter Strasse I turned towards Arkonaplatz and the Friday market.  As I'd already eaten I didn't succumb to the temptation of a whole grilled trout from the fish barbecue or a garlicky bruschetta from the Italian stand but it's a treat just to wander around and inspect the products on offer here.

 

Approaching the market through the little park, complete with 'Union' bench!

 

The market with the Zionskirche in the background.

I then walked to Zionskirchplatz, where three horse-drawn carriages came clopping by (I've no idea why), and down Veteranenstrasse, to Volkspark Weinberg - my favourite park at any time of the year. It's a lovely place to sit and read for a while or just take in the view.

 

Veteranenstrasse

 

Volkspark Weinberg

As I emerged from the park into Weinbergsweg, twilight was approaching.  For me this is the best time to be out in the city - I find it so very atmospheric in a winter's dusk.

Ambling back towards home, I paid another visit to the Scandinavian-themed Lucia Weihnachtsmarkt in the Kulturbrauerei.  In my opinion this is the most charming of the city's Christmas markets, and it's only a 15-minute walk from home.

The weather was dull but warm and dry - perfect for a stroll across Prenzlauer Berg and into Mitte.  I never tire of walking the streets of my beloved city, whether alone or in company, and the route I took today was one of my most tried and trusted favourites.  A real Friday classic.

Decisions, decisions

We’ve reached the tail-end of another year and I’m asking that perennial rhetorical question: where has the time gone?  I’m in exactly the same position I was in this time twelve months ago: speculating about the year ahead and wondering if I’ll still be in Berlin at the end of it.

 

Things seem to be falling into place here, most notably that we are picking up more work.  I’ve recently had the luxury of having to turn down work at the research centre in favour of a content writing job for a travel website. It meant that for four weeks I had days of working until midnight and had to miss a couple of literary events that I’d badly wanted to go to.  I’ve had no time for my creative writing, and the business idea that I’d been doing some groundwork for had to be put on hold but I can take it up again in the New Year. I’m also trying to complete an application for a freelance tax number, without which I can’t be paid for the travel website work.

 

But with one-way flights back to the UK booked for the end of March, we are now considering the possibility of coming back after a couple of months.  We had extended the lease on the flat until 31^st March and I’m thinking of contacting the landlord to ask whether we can move back in if he hasn’t found new tenants by the time we return. Not that I’ve any particular affection for the flat – there isn’t one piece of furniture that I would have chosen myself and I’m sick of the gigantic tropical plants we’ve had to look after. But it’s been a convenient base in a Kiez that we love and the landlord has been very quick to sort out any problems we’ve had.

If we are to come back to Berlin we will almost certainly have to decide whether or not to sell our house. I think we’re both about 65% in favour of taking that step at the moment.  It would mean we could invest properly in the language and integration course and look for an empty flat.  Besides accommodating someone else’s tastes in interior design, the other downside of living in a furnished apartment and not even being allowed to hang a picture is that it emphasises the temporary nature of our tenure here.  After two years of this I’m beginning to miss my own things. I always get slightly envious when I visit friends whose living environments reflect their own styles and personalities. I would love to have my posters and books and all the other things that were part of my everyday home life around me here in Berlin.  I’ve been longing for a pet too and we aren’t allowed to have one in our current flat.

So, decisions must be made, even if it means sitting in a pub with a notebook and pen itemising the practicalities and pros and cons.  At this moment there is, as ever, so much going on, nothing resolved, and everything still a work-in-progress.

And now for something completely different...

 

Friday 30^th October marked the second anniversary of my move to Berlin. To celebrate I thought I would do something a little different on the blog. Usually my posts are eulogies to the city I love, the things we’ve done here and the places and events we’ve been to. Today, for a change, I thought I’d share some of my least favourite things about life here. I have not dwelt on large political themes such as the erasing of socialism from the city’s past, most manifest in the construction of the pointless new Schloss on the site of the Palast der Republik. Nor is this a catalogue of hate, rather a wry look at certain aspects of life in the city that I have found exasperating, so here is my top five of Berlin gripes:

1: People not looking where they are going

If I were forced to choose a pet hate about living here it would be that nobody EVER looks where they are going. It’s no exaggeration to say that I have at least one collision every time I leave the flat. I either get barrelled into by someone coming out of a building and not bothering to check if the pavement is clear, or I clatter straight into people who have just decided to stop dead in front of me or cut across my path, again without taking the simple precaution of glancing up the street first. Having said that, there have been plenty of occasions when people have seen me but still walked into me anyway.  I also regularly get run or cycled into by children whose accompanying adults haven’t the slightest intention of encouraging their offspring to look out for other pavement users. Just the other day I was walking along Dunckerstrasse and a small child walked backwards straight into me. Rather than alerting him to the fact that I was there, his mother glared at me as though I shouldn’t have been. I haven’t worked out whether this is down to a lack of spatial awareness or just not giving a shit but it’s very, very annoying.

2: Supermarket checkouts

My second bugbear is the apparent city wide shortage of supermarket checkout staff.  At any time of the day or evening there will be only one till open even if the queue is stretching back down the aisles. If a second till is opened there will be an undignified stampede by people determined to get to it first. Also, if I’m standing with a single item nobody will let me in front of them no matter how full their trolley is.  When I do finally get to pay for my purchases I invariably incur the wrath of the checkout operative because I’ve either paid with a fifty euro note which seems to be the only denomination the ATM machines contain or I’ve handed them the correct amount of change which they then grumble ostentatiously about having to check.

3: Hipster hangouts

In third place is the proliferation of establishments such as juice bars and third wave coffee shops run by ex-pat hipsters and frequented by the city’s ‘beautiful people’.  Every week a new place with naked lights dangling from the ceiling, rosemary plants in tins, and furniture made from pallets appears. Blackboards and exposed brick walls complete the look whether it’s a craft beer bar or a burger joint and no opportunity to use quinoa or to put bacon into ‘craft’ cocktails is missed. It’s not that I object to these places – their commitment to sustainably-sourced, quality ingredients is admirable – but often they have sprung up on the site of a former favourite bar or café and I would much prefer it if they were there in addition to it rather than in place of it.

4: Ex-pat ‘creatives’

A recent Guardian article highlighted the ‘plight’ of the ‘creative Brits’ who are currently colonising areas such as Neukölln in a bid to escape extortionate London rents. They constitute the client base for the types of places referred to above and are drawn to street food events where they eat pulled pork sandwiches and drink cocktails from jam jars.  At weekends they frequent the flea markets where they spend a lot of money on crates and tin pails because it’s cool to look as though you can’t afford proper furniture. During working hours they get down to being creative in cafés and co-working spaces (communal offices where people go to stare earnestly at computer screens on a sort of time-share basis), power smoothies to hand.  I very much doubt that any of these people are starving artists driven to seek cheaper neighbourhoods.  Rather they have come to exploit Berlin’s relatively low rents, in the process contributing to the city’s ongoing gentrification problem.

 5: People who treat cafés as their own private offices

Which brings me to my final gripe. I have often taken my laptop to a bar or a café to do some work but I’ve always endeavoured to occupy an obscure corner and respect the fact that it is a public place. Sometimes however, I walk into a café and it’s full of individuals who have settled in for the day at tables that might seat three other people, justifying their occupation by having bought a single cup of coffee hours earlier. Fine if business is slow but not when potential customers are leaving because there’s nowhere to sit. If it really is necessary to spread paperwork all over the table then renting a desk at a co-working space (or even staying at home) would be a more appropriate option. It would also allow cafés to function as social spaces rather than offices. A couple of months ago I was in a café and a friend I’d not seen for a while came in so we started to chat, to the obvious displeasure of a woman with a laptop who was sitting nearby. Eventually she closed her machine and left, taking pains to make us aware that our discreetly-volumed and entirely inoffensive conversation had driven her away.  I hope she found her way to a more conducive working environment (such as St Oberholz, which is not so much a café as a co-working space with a bar) where she could do whatever it was she was doing without being disturbed by people selfishly socialising. 

Now I’ve reached the end of my list I realise how grouchy, old-fashioned and even downright misanthropic I sound, despite my attempt to keep it light-hearted. It’s also clear that some of the points address aspects of the same phenomenon, namely the changing face of the city through gentrification. I don’t write too much about this because I would just be repeating the familiar arguments but it is a genuine issue and if, as that Guardian piece seems to suggest, half the population of Dalston now lives in Neukölln, it’s something to be very concerned about.

I’m now going to go back to writing about the things I love in Berlin, while studiously avoiding kale juice and cold brew coffee.

 

A seed...

It’s been an interesting few weeks.  Lately I’ve been trying to come to terms with the fact that our time in Berlin could now be limited to mere months. We are at the point where we can just about support ourselves here until the end of March 2016.  Unless we find permanent work, our options might be limited to returning to England to work and save until we’ve earned enough for another spell in Berlin or selling our house and moving here lock stock and barrel.  The main risk with this latter option is that we could still find ourselves without a regular income and with nothing then to fall back on. 

About a year ago I wrote about how difficult it is to find real work in Berlin.  Since then nothing has changed.  We have worked a few more weeks at the research centre.  I’ve done a small amount of editing and proof reading.  A couple of times a month I meet up with a German teacher of English to help iron out any grammatical problems she has encountered.  But we still need something more substantial and permanent.

The TEFL course I completed last year has not really led me anywhere. I have considered taking the internationally recognised Cambridge CELTA certificate which is more likely to result in work but at a cost of 1500 Euros it could turn out to be an expensive and fruitless venture.

So with all of this in mind, we decided to face up to the fact that proper jobs are not likely to come our way between now and March.  We plotted an ‘exit strategy’ to minimise the trauma of having to leave.  We located a potential place to live and booked one-way flights to Birmingham (although this was mainly because the earlier they are booked the cheaper they are - it wouldn’t make sense to wait until March when they would be hundreds of pounds).  We started to think about where we might work and what we could do, developing both short-term and long-term plans.

Then, a few weeks ago, amid all of this rationalising, something happened which planted a seed in my mind and led me to consider the possibility of sharpening my elbows and embarking on a business venture.  It’s in a line of work for which I’m qualified and which could, if successful, benefit others in my position.  At the moment it’s very much only the glimmer of an idea and I haven’t properly got my head around it yet which is why I’m not saying too much about it.  It’s also something that I could conduct from any base which means that a spell back in England wouldn’t necessarily be an obstacle (although there is one side to it that is very much Berlin-centred).  It will take time to establish. I don’t have anything set up at all yet – no bank account, website or even company name. Having to take care of all of that is very daunting but if I can get something in place at least by the spring, I will have some idea of how workable it is.  I don’t have Richard Branson type aspirations – I’m no entrepreneur – but it’s something that I’m feeling quite excited about.  I spent the weekend researching practicalities and calculating costs.  At one point we  actually discussed taking out a mortgage on our house in order to finance it. It may or may not come to that but it’s something that I feel I must try, and I'm finding the prospect of returning to Cameron’s Britain quite a motivating factor!