Berlin: One Month In

Hola Faithful Blog Readers. 

Wanted to throw out a dispatch since we've now been here a month and things are sorta getting settled. We've finally moved into our new place (and out of the temp Air BnB we initially had), have gotten the kids mostly ok with new life in an all-Deutsch preschool, and now have a basic handle on the job situation. So far, extricating ourselves from US life with moving logistics/finding renters/selling car, etc was a bigger challenge than plugging into Berlin life (the U-Bahn is easy, culturally everyone's on the same page). Also, the beer is cheaper than water.

Overall, life here is a bit like a movie: the Razorfish office is right next to an old section of the Berlin Wall, there’s no open container laws, and the place is overrun with young hipsters with beards on their fixies. They speak German in the office, but if I’m in a meeting people will switch to English. Thank God, since this language is completely impenetrable. 

The kids are gradually getting into the pre-school scene after a couple initial weeks of painful howling and screaming drop-offs. Like, ripping them off your leg kind of drop offs. They are doing better now. The teachers at the school all seem nice but unfortunately only speak German (except one guy). German as you know from 99 Luftballoons is one of the more hard-edged languages on the planet. When Germans lovingly tell each other something like "I look forward to seeing you tonight so we can snuggle up in our cozy love-nest" it sounds to us like: 

"I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOU AND ALL OF YOUR RELATIVES IN THE HEAD REPEATEDLY!!" 

Luckily everyone in this country is a fanatical pacifist and guns are illegal so nothing to worry about.

Our apartment is a 4th floor walk-up in a 120 year-old building in the old section of town. 96 steps of sweet, sweet goodness to greet you everytime! The kids love that. But, there's 12 foot ceilings and creaky, yet polished and awesome wood floors. Huge windows let the light pour in. It's furnished, the guest room's a library and basically the whole place looks like something out of a photo shoot. Our balcony looks down on a leafy street with several sidewalk cafes and restaurants. There is a church at the end of the block that rings its bells every morning. Around the corner grizzled Turkish guys sit at cafe tables drinking thick, sugary coffee and smoking down stubby cigarettes. Last night a guy was sitting outside the Greek Taverna across the street playing his accordion...Aaaaaannnnnddd...CUT! Ok, everyone take five!

I've now figured out how to get across town on a decent bike route without getting lost. It involves lots of cobbles, a canal path and a few scenic and historical bridges. (without a scenic and historical bridge on my commute I'd have moved back to the US already) Tons of bike commuters here and no one wears helmets except kids. Anyone with clipless pedals, gloves and bike glasses is stared at. Cyclists have the right of way here and throw themselves out into intersections in a way that makes me cringe, but which I have to get used to since my caution basically stacks up people behind me. (Who then start mentioning how they are going to shoot my relatives immediately if I don't GTFO of the way).

Beer-wise, there's no IPAs to speak of, so it is all about the lagers. There's no open container law, so people wander around the streets here hitting their bottles at all hours. The corner stores all have bottle openers next to the cash registers. This means there is a lot of broken glass to steer around on the bike lanes, but it is worth it for the atmospherics.

People-wise, this place is very young and currently attracting lots of artsy types. Super hip. Lots of lumbersexuals with their Uniqlo, piercings and tats. Skate parks feature young-ins in blazers and jeans, mostly lacking helmets. Lots of conversation around the new cool neighborhoods (meaning rough) gentrifying and crowding out the original residents, mostly in the former Eastern side of the Wall. There doesn't seem to be any ordinance around graffitti, so artful tagging is everywhere. Buildings half blown up in the war were reconstructed with one big uniform wall on the damaged side, so that there are these huge 5 storey canvases for artists to decorate. 

Industrial progress was halted during the Wall years, and now pre-war industrial detritus has been quickly pushed aside in the rush to invest and build. Since '89 all kinds of old stuff is now either integrated as artwork into new construction or cordoned off into massive city greenspaces. Some of these parks are built on top of old railroad sidings with all kinds of historical infrastructure hiding in the weeds, which I love. Think of the industrial part of Interbay if it was allowed to go back to nature for 50 years. I find it endlessly wild and interesting to explore all that.

Our stuff still has not arrived - apparently it will by the end of August. So we've been living out of the suitcases we brought over on the airplane. I'm still trying to get a phone through work, but that requires lots of bureaucracy, and I hope to have that settled in a couple weeks. So I haven't had a phone since we left the States. Completely liberating I have to say. 

We're most of the way through the German bureaucracy of work visa, lease paperwork, relo stuff and endless registrations with various agencies all of which have names longer than our alphabet. We are cleared to stay here for a couple years if we want. They want people to stay here and have kids, so there is this "Kindergeld" program that pays you 180 Euro a month per kid. That's like $400US a month just for having kids in a German pre-school. So that's the beer fund. (note: no additional children are being planned even with the Kindergeld benefits)

SO, YEAH, basically it has proven to be a good idea to do this. Eventually we'll all be sprechen-ing German, I'll have completely forgotten how to drive a motor vehicle, and we'll think it is normal to just take off for Prague or Paris for the weekend. 

Drink through the expat stress. Go ahead.