The other day in Berlin

I am back in Germany. Two weeks now, but it feels like a lifetime. I had this plan: To rediscover my roots, to find that overwhelming sense of belonging again that had come over me when I touched German ground at Tegel for the first time in eight years on the 3rd of May.

All the moves of my childhood should have prepared me for what was coming, I should have known. Feeling At Home does not come when I want it to come, and least when planned. No comforting lull of nostalgia or sense of being a part of this country – instead I was welcomed by the rather harsh reality of the onset of Berlin autumn, the sharp cold air, nothing like that sneaky mild English humidity that slowly lulls you in autumn until it reaches your core where it stays as persistent melancholy, lifting in spring when the Enlish sun, on its annual impulse of mischief, warms numbed souls and gives pragmatic spirits audacious hope – that it just might be a hot and dry summer this year.

After seven years in Britain, German reality was a slap in the face. (Again I should have been prepared by the ten-weeks of annual summer holidays in Germany during the Portuguese years). Almost desolate, the slow erosion of the German welfare state, visible and audible in the population of the Berlin U-Bahn, broke and flat. Gone the childhood- and flying visit perception of an undamaged comforting world, of home, where everybody lives in equal comfort and noone is poor or cold. Gone the summer passion for a bohemian city where superficial things were irrelevant and where I found a companion who understood, where did it all go?

I am so infinitely cold, not even German beer will help.

It was Sunday when a German curiosity took me completely by surprise (I should have remembered and appreciated): Everything is closed on a Sunday! Luckily cornershops do exist in Berlin: I feel sick when the heavyset Berliner snarls at the small foreign girl at the vegetable stand, who by the way speaks perfect German – I bet the great lump speaks nothing but his gruff Berlinerisch twang. He's pissed off: The girl has taken two tomatoes but obviously, since she’s foreign, she was not thoughtful enough and did not to replace the price tag, nobody will be able to read the price, now that she took her tomatoes. He doesn't hesitate to tell her, bullyish. Expecting an answer, he observes her, impatiently and threatening as she nervously tries to re-arrange the tag, to no avail. “I am happy to help” he spits aggressively as he already pulls the tag from her hand and puts it on the tomatoes. “So!” his satisfied grunt. I am stunned, embarrassed and uncomfortable and shake that ugly feeling - a mixture of fear and shame about that nasty senseless German pedantry paired with ignorance that has been the cause of so much suffering.

Der schönste Ort der Welt

In viereinhalb Tagen kann ich endlich wieder reisen! Weg aus dieser ewig grauen ungesunden Suppe, weg von den einheitlich schwarz-grauen Ameisen derLondoner City, die einen verschluckt und selbst den phantasiebegabtesten aller Geister in eine schmähliche, nimmermüde und rastlose Bürokreatur ohne Substanz verwandelt, eine alles-erdrückende Arbeitermasse, ohne Glanz, Licht und Freude, die Andersartigkeit und jedem Ausbruchsversuch oder Bewusstwerden mit rücksichtsloser Unwissenheit begegnet. Stumpfer Alltag unter der Allmacht des Mammon!

Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Bäche

durch des Frühlings holden belebenden Blick,

im Tale grünet Hoffnungsglück;

der alte Winter, in seiner Schwäche,

zog sich in rauhe Berge zurück.

Von dort her sendet er, fliehend, nur

ohnmächtige Schauer körnigen Eises

in Streifen über die grünende Flur.

Aber die Sonne duldet kein Weißes,

überall regt sich Bildung und Streben,

alles will sie mit Farben beleben;

doch an Blumen fehlt's im Revier,

sie nimmt geputzte Menschen dafür.

Kehre dich um, von diesen Höhen

nach der Stadt zurückzusehen!

Aus dem hohlen, finstern Tor

dringt ein buntes Gewimmel hervor.

Jeder sonnt sich heute so gern.

Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Herrn,

denn sie sind selber auferstanden:

aus niedriger Häuser dumpfen Gemächern,

aus Handwerks- und Gewerbesbanden,

aus dem Druck von Giebeln und Dächern,

aus den Straßen quetschender Enge,

aus der Kirchen ehrwürdiger Nacht

sind sie alle ans Licht gebracht.

Sieh nur, sieh! wie behend sich die Menge

durch die Gärten und Felder zerschlägt,

wie der Fluß in Breit und Länge

so manchen lustigen Nachen bewegt,

und, bis zum Sinken überladen,

entfernt sich dieser letzte Kahn.

Selbst von des Berges fernen Pfaden

blinken uns farbige Kleider an.

Ich höre schon des Dorfs Getümmel,

hier ist des Volkes wahrer Himmel,

zufrieden jauchzet groß und klein:

Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!

(Osterspaziergang/Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Of waste paper baskets, Scottish bronchitis and the Great British experience Part I

Winton Drive, where it all began... (there were no phones in the rooms during my time... )

Here we go again: I moved! .

Everytime I do, I hope it'll be for more than only a couple of months... but it never is and it might not happen this time either as I gather from my flatmate's circumstances...

Still, there has been a lot of improvement over the years. On the occasion of this landmark move (I'm finally going to live with another German and I am pleased) I thought it was time to take stock of my housing situation over the past seven years which have been filled with such a variety of places I've been, things I've done and Characters I've met that I find it hard to put some order into that overabundance of permanent impressions...

It all began on that fateful gloomy wet and blustery Glaswegian night, on the 1st of October 2001, when I had a strange sense of foreboding when I couldn't understand a word the taxi driver said on the way from the airport to my University halls of residence (Winton Drive) and the indecently small, sickly yellowish room I would call my own for the coming months. The lovely place in question prompted my father (whose company I had chosen over the ultimate British university binge drinking experience called Freshers Week) to ask whether I would rather spend the night in a hotel (to my own astonsihment I declined).

At the tender age of 19 some of my first valuable life experiences included (1) the first close-up encounter with a waste paper basket and short term memory loss, (2) the realisation that excessive friendliness in strangers usually means that they are very drunk, (3) that you better be careful because your the seventeen year old Scottish flat mate might be your colleague in a Scottish law firm 6 years later, despite your determination to leave the country within the next 12 months, and (4) dating a Spaniard is mostly a pain and sometimes a pleasure (from a German perspective).

I also got my first Scottish bronchitis - a nasty breed as it tends to linger much longer than its continental counterpart, mainly due to adverse weather conditions (in autumn 2001 it rained every day from the 1st of October to the 15th of December, a memorable day I marked in my calendar).

The Winton Drive Experience lasted exactly 4 months. As time went by, the first excitement came to an end and the cold harsh Scottish reality set in. I knew it was time to move on when a gangly fellow and best friend of a flatmate who mostly seemed to enjoy excessive exchange of saliva with eager females and who finally discovered his homosexuality 6 years later (if only he had asked me at the time!) decided to move in. Having been outraged about his flatmates' consumption of certain dependence causing substances (weed, as far as I know), he had duly proceeded to inform the University... Needless to say that he was desperate to move, fearing for his skinny neck. (He always strangely reminded me of Sir Hiss.)

Next, I joined the largest halls on offer and moved into a "hostel" of 10, predominantly Scottish students, but chose to spend most of my time in what can only be described as Auberge Espagnole en Ecosse; not a wise idea as I discovered when my latin friends, including a certain Madrilenian with smoulering eyes, went home at the end of that year.

I have to give credit to Glasgow University's Accommodation Office (I think it's a fair comment to say that I befriended most of its staff in my 5 years of dealings with them) for its thoughtfulness in the Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German and Anglo Russian composition of my second year flat. Whilst my Scottish flat mate became a friend for years to come, I happily embarked on an affaire with our maiden, mature Irish med student flat mate - but then it all went horribly wrong. Our Norwegian friend, who liked to refer to himself as "The Viking", delighted us by cooking caramel, baking bread (during and after which the kitchen looked somehwat like a battlefield) and by consuming oily sardine sandwiches for breakfast. I think it's fair to say that he has become a devout Christian and he has recently married a wholesome lovely American girl, in which order I don't know. Finally, there was the sweet girl with the male Russian first name and the Russian father (a psychiatrist) who used to hum incessantly in a high-pitched monotone voice...

Along came the third and without a doubt the most exciting year of my time at university. I had not learned my lesson and instead requested to live with Erasmus students and two very skinny Russian girls who, in the previous year, had endured the smelly feet of their Romanian flatmate, one of the leading world experts in space law I understand...

As well as living with the Russian nymphomaniacs (as it turned out) I shared with two lovely (German and Spanish) Erasmus students. The year began weirdly: unfortunately, living with the two Russians turned out to be rather stressful as one of them, to the sheer amazement of our male flatmates, would prance around the flat, holding her breasts and chasing her female flatmates. One lovely Thursday night in November 2003 I went with my German flatmate and his equally very German The Northface wearing Rastafari friend to the Glasgow School of Art School, where I fell for a Breton.

I fell so hard that when the year was over I didn't know how to continue my life without him. We had already met two months before, one enchanted Uisge Beatha night (Pub - Woodlands Road -international student meeting) when he had not asked for my number and I almost forgot about him...

With him came the full-on Erasmus experience, spoiled only by my awareness that things would come to an end, that those I care for would once again go and hurt me. It didn't help that my Breton was equally on edge but maybe it's the reason we clicked. He literally taught me how to see the stars, how to care deeply and hurt even more and how to force yourself out of love if need be.

It was a lovely bumpy ride which took us and the little 106 from sunny magical Orkney to the smelly Fêtes de Bayonne (where I woke up one morning as an obnoxious whistling Frenchman peed behind our tent).