Going for the chop in Prenzlauer Berg

In an affront to common sense, I made an appointment at the local hairdresser (the Friseur) for 9am this morning. Having failed to wake up before 10am for two weeks (I'm putting in down to jet lag), I barely recognised the city at that time of the morning - people purposefully striding around the streets gripping onto their take-away coffee cups and bikes swerving in all directions. I could have almost been back in Sydders.

The "after-shot"

A basic task like a getting a hair cut can become a MASSIVE DEAL when you're in a foreign country. It took me about a week to work up to making the appointment, another day to learn all the vocabulary necessary to avoid ending up with tiger stripe orange streaks/a bald head/a bad fringe and quite a few hand gestures at the salon to communicate what I actually wanted done. This may seem like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but I've had a few off-shore horror hair stories: there was the time in Vietnam where my travel buddy Kels and I were seduced by the promises of funky new do's at the salon in Hanoi. Our whispy Caucasian locks were no match for the deft scissors of the locals who chopped our wayward hairs into ill-fitting layers and bestowed startling bronze-coloured streaks on our otherwise dark-brown heads. Then there was that time at the salon in Verona, Italy where I ascertained up front that a cut and colour would cost 65 Euros, to be informed at the time of payment that it would actually cost 85 as they'd dried it with the hair dryer and would now have to pay extra for the electricity bill. Dodgy. Plus, no one wants their six months worth of holiday snaps featuring them with bad hair.

I knew I was going to have to bite the bullet and go for the chop when I started to have nightmares about turning up for uni in Berlin with my straw-like, multi-coloured mane. I chose the salon on the basis of proximity (down the bottom of my apartment building), its cool name - Kamm In (i.e. "comb in", haha get it?) and my housemate's recommendation. Bravely, I booked the appointment, dumbly nodding and smiling when the Friseurin suggested 9am. I later regretted the timing after a few Aperol Spritz with my housemate and her friends the night before but figured that the appointment wouldn't be too strenuous.

The Friseurin looked offended when I explained I didn't want fat orange stripes but rather fine, subtle, natural looking blonde streaks. "Klar," she said. "Ich mache keine grosse Streifen." I explained in broken German my reasons for concern, i.e. previous experiences, at which she fortunately cracked a smile and nodded understandingly. The whole event lasted a standard two hours, during which time I got by quite admirably in my opinion, explaining I wanted her to maintain the layers, feather the hair around my face a little, let the fringe grow out and alternate blonde and brown streaks for a more natural look. We even had a spontaneous conversation about the perils of hair straighteners, where I admitted I had once been addicted but had left the appliance at home thanks to restrictions on luggage weight.

Both the Friseurin and I were pretty damn pleased with the results and I'd loosened up a little, having managed to leave the dictionary alone for more than two hours. I headed over to the cash register, gripping two 50 Euro notes in my hand (around AU$160), prepared to pay for a job well done. The price? 38 Euros. I did a double take - in Sydney, a cut and foils costs more than a week's rent at even the dodgiest of salons. I handed over the cash, collected the change and headed out into the drizzly weather, thrilled at everything and deciding to potentially visit the Friseur every 3 weeks for the same delightful treatment.

Please note: above is a somewhat vain and cringe-worthy "after photo" of my hair. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't include a self-taken photo of my head but one can hardly write an entry about a hair cut and not display the results, oder?

Getting excited about recycling

Standard collection of bins at apartment block

One of the first things to know about living with the locals here is that they get pretty excited about waste disposal. That's why when I moved into my flat here in Prenzlauer Berg, one of the first tasks to undertake was an initiation into the kitchen bin arrangements - we have four. One for plastic and tin cans, one for glass, one for paper and cardboard and one for food scraps. This is in rather stark contrast to the system of Sydney-siders which tends to be something along the lines of throwing everything that we'd like to think is recyclable but admittedly probably isn't into the bin with the yellow lid, and hoping for the best. Then when the bin with the yellow lid gets full, we either shove the rest into the bin with the red lid a little guiltily, steal a neighbour's bin or wait until the sun goes down, dump the stuff out the back on the road and then call the council the next day to complain about those filthy neighbours who are illegally dumping stuff again.

The Germans take pride in their system of responsible waste disposal and the seven different bins downstairs in my apartment block (see pic above) is a testament to this. For a foreigner, "taking the rubbish out" can be a little intimidating, trying to decipher exactly where the plastic fits in or which of the three bins for various coloured glass corresponds with the haul of beer and wine bottles you've collected over the last three weeks. After 5 years of university education, I still found myself standing forlornly in front of the seven bins wondering whether anyone would notice if I just shoved everything into the big black bin and did a runner. Don't worry, I worked it out eventually, upholding the practice of responsible waste disposal and avoiding the wrath of my co-residents.

Visiting a park in trendy, alternative suburb Kreuzberg, you can witness another phenomenon stemming from the Germans' commitment to recycling - the Pfandpiraten. When you buy a bottled drink here, you pay an extra 8c-25c "Pfand" for the glass or plastic bottle, and you get this back when you return the bottles to the supermarket (a larger scale, probably more successful version of what exists in South Australia). There are people, the Piraten (pirates) who scour the streets collecting empty bottles, returning them to the supermarket and cashing in. In the park, they'll even approach you and ask whether you're finished with your drink so they can take the bottle. It's an honest living and keeps the streets clean, a win-win situation in my opinion.

Crazy rabbit bin in a park in Kreuzberg

Local German diligently disposes of his glass.

Hanging with the Hipsters

It's not every day that I'm invited to attend gallery openings so when my housemate proposed that we head over to Galerie Lena Bruening last night to drink beer and mingle with artistic types (oh yeah and see some art), I jumped at the chance. Knowing next to nothing about art, I was delighted just to go along for the ride and hopefully see a bit more of the city by night.

My housemate changed his jacket three times before we left the house, which should probably have been my cue to slip into something a little more chic but instead I pulled on a pair of dilapidated-looking boots and scurried out the door. We were a fashionable 20 minutes late to meet my housemate's friends, thanks to the last minute wardrobe changes. Like my housemate, his friends were sleekly attired in button down over coats, well-fitted jeans and leather shoes. I wondered if the fact that I was Australian gave me enough cultural capital to make up for the dowdy boots and over-stretched black supre jeans, or whether perhaps my look could at least be mistaken for bohemian. 

Arriving at the gallery, a shopfront in trendy Prenzlauer Berg, we squeezed past a young crowd swigging Becks and nearly trampled on the art which was variously arranged on the floor. "Nicht auftreten Amy!" exclaimed my housemate as I teetered dangerously close to a sculpture which the group proclaimed looked like a nuclear reactor. The four of us gathered around a piece consisting of three gold boxes on the floor with pieces cut out of them (this is why I will never be an art critic) and had a heated discussion about the recent resignation/dismissal of the German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guettenberg who was busted for plagiarising in his PhD. A little overwhelmed by everything, I adopted my Tennis Match Look, swivelling my head towards whoever was talking as if watching a game of tennis. Remaining planted to the floor in that trendy crowd for over half an hour, I was torn between bemusement and wishing I'd dressed more appropriately for the occasion.

The others being rather unimpressed with the exhibition, we didn't stick around for the beer. I grabbed a brochure on the way out which told me that the "small scale sculpture ranges from figurative to strict constructivism" - not particularly enlightening, but at least a tiny insight into the minimalist figures precariously balanced around the starkly lit room. The group headed home through Prenzlauer Berg, with my housemate stopping to point out some of the well-known streets: Kastanien Allee, Schoenhauser Strasse and making sure to let me know the "cool" squares and courtyards where the super trendy "hipsters" stretch their legs in the summer months. Here, apparently the rent prices are around 20% higher because the cafes are cooler and presumably hipsters are willing to pay for the postcode. To be honest, I'd rather pay less rent and live a mere two tram stops away from the hipsters, thanks.

So much beer and so little time

In the last five days, I have tasted nine different sorts of beer. Seven of these were German, two were Czech. Apparently there are 5000 German beers, meaning that I have somewhere in the vicinity of 4993 to go, provided no new ones are invented in the meantime. As my trip is around 200 days long in total, if I taste around 25 German beers per day, I'll have them all tasted by the end of September. And probably have developed most of the symptoms of alcoholism but sometimes one has to make sacrifices.

The local lads have taken it upon themselves to introduce me to the best of the brews. I suspect my presence here is the perfect excuse to head down to the nearest supermarket and stock up on five or six different bottles in the name of education. At 30-80c per beer (AU$0.45-$1.10), in Germany you're hard pressed finding bottled water for a lower price. Yesterday, we gathered around the kitchen table to  kick off the evening with a Weissbier, apparently carrying on a centuries-old tradition of drinking the heavy brew with Abendbrot (the light meal Germans have for dinner, literally "evening bread"). In the olden days, when you couldn't drink the water, apparently all people would drink was beer, lending an historic significance to us drinking beer at odd hours of the day.

After the Weissbier came the various Pils and a crash course in the vocabulary necessary to critique them: "wuerzig" was "full-flavoured"; "herb" was "bitter"; "waesserig" meant "watery" and "sueffig" was "light and sweet". To keep all the beers straight, I implemented my own rating system of drawing smiley faces on the lids of the beers I liked and sad faces on the ones I found too bitter and watery. I ascertained that out of the three major beers from Berlin, Berliner Kindl is to be avoided but the plain old Berliner is very drinkable and the Schultheiss isn't bad either. The evening's winners were the Erdinger Weissbier that we started with and the light Augustiner we finished with, although it is possible that by evening's end, the ratings became a little more generous.

Luckily jet lag forced me to go to bed and forego the rest of the Augustiner and probably a hangover this morning. According to the boys, one should never mix too many beers in one evening, as it has the same effect as mixing spirits with beer and wine. It's therefore necessary to commit to one brew for the evening. The exception is when you have an ignorant foreigner who has 24 years of catching up on German beer to do. Then, anything goes.

Humboldt Uni, I do exist

It was disconcerting to arrive at Humboldt University (HU) yesterday to be told that according to their records, I don't exist. After months of preparation - applications, language tests and finding a flat in Berlin, not to mention the efforts it took to actually leave Sydney - the prospect of being sent home weighed heavily. Luckily, I had a signed letter from the HU law faculty which I triumphantly produced to the guy at International Office who gave me a few stern words but eventually assured me I'd be allowed to stay.

One hurdle sorted, I've had a few more to conquer. Embarrassingly, I've arrived in the Northern Hemisphere to face the dregs of winter without socks or proper shoes, and have also managed to forget an adaptor, towel and the password to unlock the German sim card for my mobile. Sheer need has already driven me to visit supermarkets, chemists, clothing stores and electronic stores and a trip to IKEA has been planned for later this week. At least it's one way to break the ice with the locals and give the German dictionary a bit of a workout, wandering around the city.

Delightfully, I have four supermarkets to choose from within a 200m radius of my house. A dream come true for someone used to the scant fresh food offerings of Newtown. I've stocked up on all the essentials, including a huge jar of gherkins which I've warmly embraced as a breakfast food. Breakfast, or "Fruehstuck", consists of rye bread, cheese, gherkins and is accompanied by a dose of largely non-comprehensible German radio. I'm trying my best to be an authentic Berlinerin but destined to spend at least the next few weeks grappling with the language, uni administration, temperatures and transport system of this sprawling city.

Guten Tag

The notion of boring you all with lengthy monthly emails containing my observations of Berlin being distinctly unappealing, I have decided to dip my toe into the world of blogging. At breakfast several times per week I will endeavour to be concise and entertaining and introduce you to an exciting new German word. Please don't judge me too harshly for my efforts and may all of us be at least a little entertained by my ramblings over the coming months.

PS. Guten Tag = hello