White Tiger’s Lair

It is Golden October in Berlin, it is getting pretty cold with a daytime high of (a high of 4C or 39F) on Friday and all the leaves are changing colors.  Mein Freund came up for the weekend so I went out and played tourist instead of sitting at home playing on the internet. 

I was not feeling well on Friday so we went to bed very early (8pm) and therefore woke up at 3 am Saturday morning.  As we were already awake we decided to take advantage of it. So we looked up the time of the sunrise and the best places in Berlin to see it.  6am finds us on the road to the “tallest mountain in Berlin” which was actually made from the rubble after WWII and with a now long abandoned American military listening post at the top.  It is out of the main part of the cite by about 10km in Grünenwald and along the way I saw what I thought was a very large dog in the road, as we got closer we found it was not a dog but a wild boar, actually it turned out to be a whole family walking along the road, 2 adults and 3 babies.  I tried to get pics, but it was too dark for them to come out well.  So, we park the car and hike up to the top of the “mountain” with 15 min to spare before sunrise to find… the whole top is fenced off, in most places with two fences. Shit…

Now of course I would not know from first hand experience, but I hear tell of you walk ¾ the way around the perimeter you will find a place where the fence has been bent away and if you move the big rocks placed underneath there is just enough room for a person to squeeze under the fence.  I also hear tell that if you go to the top you can climb up the siding of one of the buildings to the roof (but you must be careful because it is sharp and can cut your hands) and get a beautiful view of the sun rising over Berlin. Then you may find that the next building over has a handy fire-escape ladder to its roof and you will feel stupid for almost killing yourself on the first building when the view from the second is so much better.  Then if you are a wrongbär you might feel even worse when you realize you could have squeezed through two of the bars on the front gate instead of scrambling under a fence.  =)

Around 9am we were in Potsdam walking through the palace gardens, then through downtown Potsdam, then the Hollander quarter (with very good hot coco and cake) and a big open air market, finally back through the gardens and off to the Russian village and the “English country house”.

Finally home and to some interesting Thai food and again to bed early…

Sunday morning we decided to see the rise over Berlin from the Reichstag, I mean really how long can the line be at 8am Sunday morning… Well it turned out to be a good thing we got there at 7:40am, but the view was amazing and it was a crystal clear blue sky, which is something we have not seen often in Berlin this year.  Leaving around 9am, the line was already about 30 meters long.

This may come as a surprise to people who have known me for a while but, I have gotten in the habit of going to the gym during my lunch break.  I look forward to this time every day,  it gives me a chance to get out of the office an move a bit, not to mention have some “me”  time.  Today as the cross training machine beeped telling me my time was up, I realized I wasn’t finished, I was actually enjoying it, I was in my own little world smiling and running along (planning how to write the company profiles for the short listed candidates for a Bioplastics investment, but that is another story).  Who would have ever guessed that I of all people would enjoy exercise and not want to stop!

I also ran into my old boss at the gym, Berlin is indeed a small world, i say as i put on my heavy coat, scarf and sock hat to walk the 2 blocks back to the office (it is only sept, what happened to summer??)…

I was sitting in a nice little Used bookstore/coffee shop today working on my German homework (yeah i know homework on a Saturday afternoon?? But it is cold and rainy here even though it is late Juli.  When I asked what time it was I got the an answer you would only get in Germany “ fünf vor vertel acht” that means 5 minutes before 15 minutes before 8, translation 7:40 (though it  may have been a few minutes later by the time I finished the math for that one  =)   Ahh the German Language, you gotta love it of go completely crazy!

Sometimes people really confuse me.  My officemate wasn’t sure if he was allowed to tape a map of Germany to the wall (there are literally 10’s maybe more than 100 maps on the wall here. So I did it. 

Our office door is like a hotel room, it automatically locks when closed.  Ours is the only door that does this.  So I taped 1 of the locks “open” so that we can still lock the door, but it doesn’t do it automatically.  We got in a debate over this because he wasn’t sure if it was allowed.  My view is removing a strip of tape if someone complains in no big deal and likely no one will notice or care anyway. 

My conclusion from these experiences is that maybe Europeans are naturally much more cautious than Americans,  more so then I had originally believed.

We work in an agency promoting Germany and all things German.  We therefore have “foreign” customers walking through the office all day and our office door is plain see-through glass. 

Today, my officemate prints out a big (A5) picture of the Pakistani flag and puts it on the wall where everyone will see it as they walk down the hall.  He said he was doing it to get a reaction. 

GEEEZZZ,  Grow-Up, this is a business not a dormitory!

It is 35 C (that is 95 F) in Berlin today and of course my office does not have AC, worse yet I work in a building designed basically as a green house. Uuhhggg… I am glad the summer has finally decided to arrive, but it could have made a slightly less impressive entrance! I am sure my Basil sitting on my windowsill at home is loving it though.

I spent the weekend sightseeing in Berlin with a friend who is German, I think I now know more about German history than I do about American history. One of the coolest things was looking at pictures from when the wall came down. My friend came to Berlin when it started happening as we telling me what it was like to be here, the people he met, and the mood of the people. For me it was something I watched on TV ½ a world away, but he was here experiencing it and looking at the pictures and hearing the stories really made an impact. I also got a very different view of World War II history then is taught in American text books, hearing stories of his grandparents both what they thought was happening and how they lived through it.

***Update***

It is now 38 C in Berlin, (that is 100.4F)  so, my overall expert opinion… it is bloody HOT today!

Life in Berlin always seems to have its little surprises.  

In Germany it is common to put a picture on your resume.  After trying and failing a few times at home with the digital camera I decided it was time to get serious and do it right. (The pictures are supposed to be a certain size and have a certain pose, much like a mug shot or passport photo.)

So first stop was a hair salon, I thought if this is what people are going to decide my future on then I  want to look as professional as possible.  In my very broken German I was able to explain what I wanted (not don’t cut anything, just style it an see if you can get rid of the frizzies). 

Ok, so far no problem, as she was washing my hair I finally thought to ask how much it would cost.  “oh it is free, you can be my model, I have to practice” umm yeah, not quite what i had in mind.  The German educational system is a little different and some case people work for 3 weeks take classes for 3 weeks then work another 3 weeks and so on for a few years.  This particular girl was at the “practice blow-drying” stage in her education.  So about and hour later I walk out with and aching scalp and a hair style that was a cross between a helmet and a bobble head doll…

Luckily after about 2 hours it relaxed and turned into a reasonably good straight hair style…