New Year's Eve 2010 is SOOOO Last Year

New Year's Eve is called Silvester here, officially renamed back in the early '80s in honour of the sweaty star of the Rocky and Rambo films. As usual, the night saw vast amounts of fireworks tossed with gay abandon by everyone, everywhere and at everything. Explosions were so frequent, the sound was less like individual bangs and more like an endless waterfall of ball bearings clattering down a massive glass staircase in the sky.
This went on for hours and hours and hours, though "veterans" I spoke to agreed it was quieter than previous years.

I captured a little of the visual aftermath for your viewing pleasure. It's very revealing, don't you think. If I was of the American persuasion I would probably say "enjoy!" now, but as I'm not I won't.

For health reasons! It's got herbs in it!


Surely this is illegal?


Berlin is the true home of international glamour.


I don't know what this is, but there are thousands and thousands of them lying in the streets.

PS: The snow has only melted in the last couple of days, so the streets are now piled high with a rich layer of grit, thawing rat corpses, burnt out fireworks and weeks old "art" left by Berlin's dogs. It's great!

More Tea Goethe?

Our Berlin kitchen looks pretty much like every other Berlin kitchen.
A casual observer might even leap to the conclusion that it was an entirely German kitchen, populated by very German inhabitants engaged in absolutely German activities.
But anyone paying attention would notice this Leaning Tower of Tea-za.
A definite sign of British kitchen-contamination if ever there was one.
I don't know why my used teabags end up like this.
It's just what you do, isn't it?
Very un-German.
Oder?

Leaf It Out!

Ok, I promise this is my last post about leaves for the rest of this year.
I've just been so captivated by the incredibly well organised mission to rid the city of stray plant matter in the past month. As far as I can see, the efforts of the leaf squad have been incredibly successful, although I have noticed one or two mottled stragglers blowing down Berlin's leafless strasses in the past week, late droppers I suppose. Anyway, I'd like to shed some light on a couple of the many leaf removing processes that I witnessed. Or at least the ones I photographed. Alas I didn't get any photos of the incredible Zeppelin Leaf Hoover as it hung awesomely over the metropolis.

The Spaceman method:

Futuristic back-mounted blowing device that also doubles as a jetpack in order to reach those annoying high up danglers.
(Non-Germans will greatly enjoy the Hasselhof poster)

The Hoover monster:

Orange truck pulls a trailer carrying a large robot (out of shot) possessing lengthy octopusesque arms that slither about on the street. Orange overall bedecked human drones busily brush stray leaves (and kittens) into wide funnels at the end of each arm. Terrifying.

Humour:

Part of a huge campaign to liven up the image of Berlin's street cleaning company, BSR. Occasionally quite funny in German, but this attempt at joking in English left me feeling confused and disoriented.

Westhafen - a barrel of laughs

Here's a photo I snapped on the bridge near Westhafen station at noon today.
Such a beautiful scene, so cosy and warming, and I wanted to capture the moment to show that special "welcoming" glow so typical of Berlin in November.
Gorgeous.

Leaves Left

It's autumn here in Berlin.
I can't speak for the rest of Germany (I don't have the correct forms from the Standesamt) but it's definitely autumn here.
Last night a real screamer of a wind storm was happening outside - had to turn the tv up to block it out - and this morning there are almost no leaves left on the trees.
Something like that could bring a modern city to a complete standstill, but here in Berlin those naughty leaves are dealt with most severely.

It's only noon and already the teams of men in orange overalls driving insectoid little orange street cleaning trucks have hoovered up the majority of the mess. The leaves that don't fit into the insect trucks are left in great piles at the ends of each street, to be collected later by much bigger orange mother trucks.
Bafflingly, the huge piles of leaves stay where they are despite the wind's attempts to redistribute them.
And why? Because the chaps in the orange overalls spray the leaves with magnetischerblattkleberspray (magnetic leaf glue spray).
Leaf chaos under control!

SNOWBLINDED!

Astounding effect created by sprinkling 150,000 tonnes of talcum powder over Kotbusser Tor from hot air balloons.

After what seemed like months of miserable rain, probably because it rained miserably for months, WINTER has stamped its frozen flippers and whitewashed the city. It's like the washing powder adverts on tv where the housewife holds up a large European city in the sunshine and exclaims "I never knew Warsaw could be this white!" (or it may have been a bedsheet).

Skalitzer Strasse - boy band approaching fast.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it snowed this morning and I love it. "weather experts" predict minus 14 for tonight. One thing's for sure, I'm going to be filling my shoes with hot porridge.

Victim Of Senseless Nostalgia

I was just in the supermarkt (exciting, thrilling life) and noticed these "English Style" (because of course they don't have them anywhere else in Britain) Salt and Vinegar crisps.
I couldn't help it, I fell into a sort of drooling hypnosis and bought them.
I made three big mistakes.
Mistake 1:
I should've been warned off by the word "chips".
Mistake 2:
Salt & Vinegar crisps NEVER come in red bags.
Mistake 3:
I'm not known as "the Karlheinz Stockhausen of food" so I should stop experimenting.


Next time I will be buying the Scottish, Welsh or Irish style ones.

I shall not be buying them again, ever. Nauseating.
Although I ate half of them (reflex action).
Please excuse me while I go and incinerate the remnants of the pack.

BAKED!

I've been away from this blog for a long time. Several seasons have passed, I've travelled all over the place, eaten some incredibly disturbing food, discovered more best music ever, started to learn German, bought too many records, drawn a lot of (but not enough) drawings, danced with penguins, played chess with squirrels and what was it that made me finally post here again? What astounding, shocking revelatory event slapped me around the face and brought me back here?

Well I'll tell you.
I was in Kaiser's the other day and I saw they sell HEINZ BAKED BEANS. To think of all the times I almost violated the maximum baggage weight flying back from London with 6 cans in my suitcase when all along the answer simply lay on Schonhauser Allee!

It's such good news it's almost deeply upsetting - in a good way!
And they even have a German label.
Why do they have a German label though?
Surely no Germans eat them.
I've only seen Germans laugh at them.
Maybe that's why they buy them.
Bored Germans needing something to laugh at in the kitchen?

HERE is Spring.

It all happened so quickly.
Mauer Park this morning on my way to work.
I swear you could almost hear the leaves unfurling like in some eerie timelapse film.
Why is spring called spring?
Because it's BOUNCY!

Schlager Army

Ah, fewer things are stranger than another culture's collective nostalgia for something they actually want to forget. But can't. Living here in Germany, my own nostalgia for the weird television of my childhood is meaningless to anyone but me. I can't share it. So I'm actively trying to find connections to the childhood memories of my German contemporaries - to gain access to the the collective cultural consciousness of Germany! No more lonely memories.

"Disco" was a popular music show here in the 70s and 80s that mixed international pop hits with the domestic Schlager musical terror. the more I hear schlager from this period, the more I'm convinced that it was actually a clever invention of the German avant-garde elite.

In this clip you'll see schlager singer Tony Marshall (?) leading an hysterical marching, clapping conga line of guests into the show, including a fairly enthusiastic ABBA at the front. Just when you think it's about to end, it starts again with double intensity. No escape. My favourite moment has to be around 1:22 when two surly youths stubbornly fold their arms instead of clapping (probably communist radicals). And look out for the policewoman posing as a dancer, standing on the piano and freaking out around 3:08!

As I said, soon I'll be able to actually remember this from my childhood, even though I was definitely elsewhere at the time.