I have a bike thing. I've been addicted for many years, and I'm pretty sure my dream job will someday turn up, and it will involve bikes in some way or another.
But irrelevant. I found this a while ago, and I thought I should show it to you. It's beautiful. Truly.
I've been living in this part of Berlin that no-one really seems to think is cool except for me, for about the last year now - and i swear, it just keeps getting cooler. I think we've found 3 new art galleries in the last 6 months and at least as many cafes!
Prepare for a full report, and maybe an interview with the owners of some of these fine establishments in the coming weeks.
But for now - check out this place, just around the corner from me! I can vouch for their coffee, it's great!
Wow, it's a new year! I've really not managed to write anything recently, as I started a new job on the 1st of November at a tech start up called Xyologic, and that along with the whole Christmas/New Years circus has kept me pretty busy.
A brief pause in the battle...
I want to write about New Years Eve in Berlin. Coming from Australia, where it's pretty much illegal to have your own fireworks, I was totally unprepared for the onslaught of incendiary paradise that this time of year incites. I arrived back in a unusually mild Berlin a few days before NYE, after a wonderfully relaxing few days in Bremen, and headed home with no particular problems. I failed to notice the occasional pop and bang that had already begun. After all, Berlin is not the quietest of cities at the best of times. It wasn't until I made it back to my WG (Wohngemeinschaft - German share house) that i started to register the occasional crack. To be honest, the first couple of bangs i assumed to be cars backfiring. gradually i started to get the feeling that a warzone had come to Berlin, but it wasn't until the next day when my flat mate got home that i got an explanation.
Not bad for a phone camera in the middle of the night right?
Apparently this happens every year. For the few days before the change of years, everyone goes out and spends their hard earned on all kinds of exploding fun stuff, and then most of them can't wait until 11.59pm on the 31st, so they let one off every now and again, you know, just to test that shit out. And scare wayward Australians waiting at bus stops.
Anyway, we had a nice NYE dinner at my place with a few friends, then snuck up onto a rooftop to experience the war from a (safer) elevated position. My friends tell me that this area of the city is tame, but even to get to the building we got on the roof of, we had to sneak ninja style through the streets, avoiding the loudest bangs and low flying rockets with military style precision (and cowering behind parked cars). What we saw was nothing less than a war zone, but an oddly co-operative one. It seemed as though the whole city was working together to give one another an amazing show. And what a show it was. Unfortunately I only had my phone camera with me, but i found this video from last year to give you some idea of what it's like.
Pretty impressive right? It certainly astounded me, well and truly. Anyway, I'm starving, and I'm going to go try out a Mexican restaurant one of my co-workers recommended to me. Maybe you'll hear about it, if it's good :)
