This kind of Stadtleben

Week 3 of my official residency in Berlin begins in ernest.

Some things are already settling in routine, like going to my daily German classes, the late rises to the irrepressible spring sun, bike riding down to the bank by the canal to indulge in a David Mitchell novel amongst the grooming swans and Berlin's beautiful and unemployed people, not wanting to check my emails (and my bank account), weeknight catch ups at easy-going gigs here and there with my new random acquaintences, Tuesdays bartering at the Turkish farmers markets; 'Happy Brownies' dinner party at the English Bookstore on Reismannstr on Fridays; and Sunday evenings making volkküche at the teahouse where my Glaswegian co-chef and I try and out do each other with ingenous vegan creations from the most basic and usually half rotten ingredients. I have a feeling that the summer will be gone before I even know it.

In usual Baroness expediency, I found myself a sunny little room in a retro 4th floor apartment just off Kottbusser Tor on my third day in Berlin, half a block from the canals in a leafy street dotted with op-shops, little cafes, half open experimental fashion boutiques and microgalleries. My flatmate Suszanne is a German girl who is a jewellery designer (though in these days of financial hardship she minors in Garden design as well). Suszanne 'ran away from home' aged 17 to West Berlin from a fishing town up north a couple of years before The Wall came down, and everyday she provides a little more insight into that illusive Berlin psyche to me with her openess about emotional and political subjects, and a relief to me because at the beginning I really thought the language and cultural divide were far more pricklier than its now turned out. And she intorrigates me in pretty much the same way I do her: ''So, is New Zealand crazy too?''.

You can tell that she is a designer by the way she's decked the place out. Everything in the house has both aesthetic and functional dymentions, like the dome shaped shower curtain (resembling Marie-Antoinette's corsets) which she sewed up herself, can be pulled up like a ship's sail with tiny thin fishing strings, with magnetic buttons sewn to the hem to ensure a stable fix to the bathtub; The (fake) diamond chained toilet paper holder is strengthened by a plastic tube through its middle to ensure a smooth roll; The stylish 60s radio in the kitchen acts as a perfect contrast to the bachelorette pad's feminine energy. The rest of the building is fashioned in art nuveau style, from the elaborate front door and the chequered marble tiles to the beautiful frostings on the stair case window glass, which, after a night at the Happy Brownies gathering, spit out beautiful sparks of everchanging fire works as it sillouetted the amber and silver lamps from the court yard..

My new bedroom is rectangularly shaped like my old room in Shoreditch, but basically twice the size and half the rent. Why I have such accommodation luck in my short life I do not know, but I hope it never runs out!! My huge desk overlooks the apartment across the road, the balconies climbing with ivy, and the assortment of neighbours would pop out to sunbathe or smoke every so often while I work on head-splitting German grammar.

My life in London already feels like a life time away. The hardest thing, particularly in the first one and half weeks, was to adjust to a life without crowds, cues and stress. The amount of space here seemed at first all too much, and I felt compelled to fill it somehow. The amount of time now I have to myself seemed to be too vacant at first, and I felt compelled to jam it in with work, committments, and distractions. See, the cultural shock thing and the language barriers I can handle, but its the lifestyle change that's hit me the hardest. The speed and intensity of London had left me a little strung up and neurotic. I've had to teach myself to sit in a cafe and savour my coffee slowly and watch the world's punks and their dogs go by, without wanting to get up and get to my next destination. I've had to learn to stroll instead of march on the streets, and learn that when people greet you with a simple smile and very little small talk is not a sign of disinterest, but a way of understanding this shared meditative pace of Berlin's day life. It actually is incredibly hard, and now that I am slowly getting there, I am finding that I am letting go of little hang ups I used to have, and perhaps just getting a little further in feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin... Meditation? Ja...

The almost full time evening German lessons are going rather well. I think being in a total immersion environment has given me the right motivation and the tools to finally 'click' on some of those crazy grammatic rules and phrases, but like most new arrivals in my class, its a long way to go. Its amusing though, being in such a diverse class of mixed mother tongues trying to negotiate their ways around the brick like consonents.

Tung, the Vietnamese Restauranteur, for example, sounded like a choir of chickens on mezzo-soprano with mosquitos on baritone and some out of control triangle, and Alviro, the Spaniard with both a natural and a Barcelonian lisp (who's name was enough to suggest that he might just be the original carrier of the Swine virus) sounded like a deflating balloon across thin air. So I'd hate to think what I actually sound like with my torchered Kiwi Monovowel.

I guess in a way with both pronunciation and grammatic difficulties, the only easy thing to do in German so far is flirting via text message, where one has the excuse of dropping as much grammatical fuss as possible.

Some of my favourite words in German:
Gummistiefel - gumboots
Krankenwagen - ambulance (but literally, the sick car)
Messer - knife
Handballmannschaft - handball bats
Bonbons - lollies/candies

And some of my least favourites:
Staatsangehörigkeit - nationality
Gerschirrspüller - dishwasher
and
Liebe - love (yes, still working on that hang up!)