Ich bin eine Berlinerin!

Ich bin eine Berlinerin!

Me with the Fam

Finally after travelling around for almost two months I have arrived in Berlin. Firstly a big shout out to everyone that I stayed and partied with. It was awesome to see so many people that I hadn't seen in ages and great to meet many new and interesting ones on my travels. Always know that there is a place in my heart and in my house for you guys when you are in the Kensington (Melbourne) way.

On to the juicy stuff. I am staying with a lovely couple at the moment. How do I know them? For this you will have to put your listening ears (in this case reading eyes) on. My Dad's really good friend from high school married a woman who moved to Perth. There Sue (that's the wife) made a friend whose husband is German. I am staying with the husband's godson's parents. So lets just say friends of friends. Its pretty good although its way out in the suburbs so I usually leave about an hour to get from the house to the Uni, which is right in the thick of it in town. Its like maybe the Ringwood equivalent of Berlin. Last night I even walked past a club/bar that is like Daisey's out in Ringwood, complete with 40 year old women dancing away to Whitney Houston's 'I wanna dance with somebody'. Touching.

My family inSpandau

So at the moment I am looking for a place to live. I saw my first place today which was, hmmm, interesting. The room was massive, including the bed and desk... in the corner was what looked like an old fashioned stove. This was in fact the heating, where you light the fire and then burn wood and coal to keep yourself warm. I can just imagine all my clothes becoming covered with soot and looking like an extra from Mary Poppins when they sing Chim-Chiminey! There were also about a million shoes in the hallway. You know how at some peoples apartments or houses you have to take off your shoes before going in? Imagine that this happens at this house, however when it comes time for the people to leave, instead of collecting their shoes they just leave them in the hallway. Now imagine that this has happened for about 5 years. Seriously. Needless to say I'm still looking.

Yesterday was sort-of the beginning of the language course, which consisted of showing up and sitting a half hour test so that they can put you in a group. I thought that the test was going to be super strenuous, however it was one and a half pages of fill in the gaps, with most of the time the first letter being supplied for you. It was okay although some of it was tricky and I left a few blank spaces. When I was waiting to collect the other info I saw one of the test ladies flicking through the tests that people had done and lots of people hadn't written anything on the other side so that was comforting.

After the hours and hours of sitting in the test, we looked for an Aussie bar to watch the AFL finals in. In the end Ben called the embassy to see if they knew of anywhere (that was the 5th call that they had had about it that day). There are a few places to watch the Grand Final, although none for the other finals. Which is freaking annoying because I would have loved to have seen the West Coast v Sydney game, obviously with the alternate ending! Instead I was freaking out in an Internet café, listening to it. Not quite the same. I did enjoy the part of the commentary when the special comments guy, I think it was Sam Kekovich, said "It's a good game" and one of the regular commentators replied "No shit Sherlock". Really made me miss 'Stralia!

After the game I caught the train back out to Spandau, where a lady had to wake me up when we reached the end of the line and I had fallen asleep. So that was nice. That night I met up with some Melb Uni German classmates so that was awesome to see the girls and I also met up with them tonight. Although tonight ended up being a total bust, just walking around without knowing really where to go as happens in a new city. So this week the homework is to do a bit of research and work out the places to go. On the way home I called Gretchen and spoke to her for a while before they turned the lights out in my telephone cubicle, very strange.

Oh other info. The language course that I am doing runs for 4 weeks and tomorrow we find out what group we are in. There are two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each for 5 hours. At the moment I am praying to be in the afternoon session as it would be much more convenient. The course seems like it will be good just from the different people that I have met so far from Norway, America, Ireland, England and Barcelona.