Things I miss

There is plenty to love about this city, and Germany in general, but it is undeniably lacking in a few material aspects. Since it is a Saturday night (obviously not breakfast time but please don't hold it against me), and I am home alone studying, I feel I am entitled to be nostalgic, and share a few of those wistful moments. And also a few appreciative observations about Deutschland because on the whole it is a pretty cool place and one should always count her blessings.

• You Tube. It doesn't work. You cannot watch the official music videos from most artists, due to some licensing issue which I probably should understand because I'm a law student but don't.
• Coffee. According to my very unofficial but highly conclusive research, Australia has the best coffee.in. the.world. By comparison, it costs almost nothing and you can go crazy with your milk choices - skim, soy, full-fat. Germans aren't terribly into low fat products, although I have to give credit for the BIO versions of everything in the supermarkets and most eateries.
• Sushi and other foods. Sure, you can get sushi here but it's pricey. I've found myself yearning for a fresh tuna roll with sesame seeds many a time. Other noteworthy groceries I've pined for include low-fat crunchy peanut butter, Weetbix and buck choy.
• Stuff in English, especially uni classes. It takes me around four times longer to read a page of a German textbook compared to a page of English, which is a major drag. Plus, doing stuff like going to a hairdresser or doctor or buying an electrical appliance require hours of prior mental preparation and a dictionary or a willing translator.
• Credit cards. You can pay with them everywhere in Australia and stroll around cash free. Here, even the major supermarket chains don't always accept them and send you across the street to search for an ATM.

Things I do rather enjoy:

• Lower rent prices. I pay less than half the rent here than in Sydney for a beautiful room that is more than twice as big. Other bonuses are that the flat has no cockroaches (they are almost non-existent here), it is insulated and because tenants here actually have rights, mostly you don't have to worry that the landlord is going to sell the place from underneath you or put up the rent every year just because they can.
• My student transport ticket. I did resent forking out 150 euros at the start of semester for the ticket, but I have to admit, being able to step onto any local trains and trams without thinking twice is pretty damn convenient. And it's totally true what people say about German trains - they really are (almost) always on time.
• Turkish food. What take-away Thai is to Newtown, Turkish cuisine is to Kreuzberg. Having tasted the freshest falafel, the softest bread, the tastiest gozleme, and those sirrupy, buttery sweets on a regular basis, I am sold.
• Beer and other beverages. The beer here does not disappoint. There is something to suit almost all tastes, it is cheap and you can drink it on the street, on the train or in a hospital. Also, the relatively low taxes on alcohol in Germany mean that I can buy bottles of decent Australian (Cassella's) wine here for less than what I pay IN AUSTRALIA.
• Being able to get to other countries fast. Obviously a major plus point for European cities, from Berlin you can spontaneously drop into to Poland or Denmark and return flights between Berlin and Milan cost as little as 30 Euros. And yes, I am taking advantage - trip to Croatia, Italy and the UK in August already booked.

Birthday times

Across from East Side Gallery

Celebrating a birthday in Berlin clearly has its perks. First, there's the German tradition of "reinfeiern" which basically means commencing the festivities the night before the birthday. In true German style, this should be done with plenty of beer. Only at midnight (that is, the first moment of the actual birthday), is anyone allowed to wish you a happy birthday - a moment too early can mean a year of bad luck.

My birthday was wonderfully reingefeiert with the arrival of Ria, my long-lost Welsh friend who safely arrived on Thursday evening via low-cost carrier Easy Jet to celebrate. Reminiscent of our semester spent abroad in Italy, we dined on home-cooked Barilla pasta and sauce before heading downstairs to the nearest pub (of which there are three on my block alone).

Fun in NeuKoeln

Over-excitement made it impossible to sleep soundly, and with that excuse, I skipped Friday morning classes in favour of a leisurely brunch at a favourite haunt "An einem Sonntag im August". I then begrudingly dragged myself to a lecture while Daniel accompanied Ria on a whirlwind tour of some of Berlin's essential sights - Parlament House, Brandenberg Gate, Memorial to the Jews and the Berlin Cathedral. Fortified with a fabulous "natural" energy drink I've discovered here, Club Mate, we returned home for delicious birthday cake with my housemates and then headed out to a house party in Neukoeln where we sipped red wine and crumped until the wee hours of the morning.

Ria at the Berlin Wall

Determined to squeeze in essential Berlin experiences for Ria, after far too little sleep on Saturday we visited the East Side Gallery. This is an impressive 1.3 km stretch of the remainder of the Berlin wall which has been colourfully adorned with murals by around 100 artists from all over the world. A currywurst, the well-known Berlin delicacy consisting of a sausage with tomato sauce and curry powder, at one of Berlin's two famous Currywurst Buden completed an afternoon of sightseeing.

The moment we mopped up the last drops of curry-tomato sauce with our hot chips is approximately when the weather turned nasty and my dream of celebrating my birthday in an outdoor beer garden was dashed. The temperature dropped, the clouds heaved, and within minutes the mild spring weather regressed to chilly winter gales and pounding rain. Frantically, I searched for an alternative location for the planned gathering, which after half an hour of slight panic fortunately presented itself in the form of a very nice Italian restaurant just over the street.

Claudia, Ting-Yan, Lena and Me

The interior was warm, the waitress friendly, the cocktails sweet and the company superb. The bad weather deterred a few but the mood was not to be spoiled - the restaurant owned presented me, the Geburtstagskind, with a complimentary rose and Bailey's on ice and I enjoyed renditions of Happy Birthday in no less than 5 languages (English, German, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin). Some of us then made our way to Wohnzimmer, a cosy bar in Prenzlauer Berg, where the miscellaneous retro couches and softly lit corners conjure fond memories of a certain Madame Fling Flong's in Newtown. A couple of beers ended a lovely, and in the end quite spontaneous, birthday celebration.

A snack on board

But the fun was not yet over. On the fourth morning of my never-ending birthday, Ria and I dragged our tired and alcohol-infused bodies down to the wharf to embark on a cruise of the River Spree and Berlin's canals. After a slight mix-up with the trains and hastily requesting directions from some locals, we boarded the ferry with dozens of other tired-looking students for the four hour tour of Berlin. Although the temperature dropped below 15 degrees, Ria and I determinedly perched ourselves atop the vessel for an advantageous view of Kreuzberg, Charlottenberg, the city centre and everything in between. Fortunately, drifting along rivers looking a beautiful scenery requires very little exertion. A well-timed espresso kept us perky.

Super cool in Kreuzberg

That evening, we headed to Kreuzberg for a taste of cool, grungy with a Turkish flavour. Sprawled on the grass in the park as dusk, we had a distinct hipster moment as we listened to musicians spontaneously play guitars and watched the girls next to us get stoned. The moment was shattered when we promptly pulled out our cameras to record the coolness of it all, and our cover was blown.

Way too much amazing Egyptian food

The evening culminated in a lavish Egyptian feast at an amazingly good restaurant we stumbled upon across from the park. We ordered more food than we could eat for less than 10 euros each and sank into the plush sofas patting our bellies as the evening wore on. Exhausted after three days with very little sleep, Sunday night was rather tranquil leading up to Ria's early departure on Monday. Dizzingly tired and still tasting last night's babaganoush, we embraced in the departure lounge, and I had to accept that my birthday, spectacular as it was, was over for another year.

When all that's left is Hawaiian Hula Dance

It's been said before (see previous entry, Shaking it at Salsa), Humboldt University has an impressive range of sports on offer for students but a major defect exists in their ruthless booking system. Within three minutes of bookings opening, I'd missed out on a coveted place in both Streetdance and Hip Hop. Other, savvier students were obviously sitting tensely around computers with their fingers poised far more strategically than mine when it came time to sign up. I refused to accept the prospect of a sloth-like summer merely moving from one currywurst outlet to the next beer garden, and in a fit of desperation, found myself parting with 13 Euros for an 8 week Hawaiian Hula Dance course.

Last Thursday, I trotted along to the first session, sheepishly disregarding instructions to wear a skirt, bring a towel, a drink bottle and a padlock for the lockers. I should have known I'd be the only one in jeans, which are so incredibly unsuitable for Hawaiian hula dancing I think the teacher's irritation actually turned to pity on the spot when she witnessed my awkward hip wiggle in tight blue denim.

The class was unlike any dance class I'd experienced, which is saying something considering I've spent a significant part of my youth in jazz and tap dancing classes and have recently started salsa lessons. The teacher, a round, bubbly woman in an enormous blue Hawaiian print skirt and transparent white blouse, announced at the beginning of the class that she would be correcting our posture with her hands, and to speak up if we had a problem with being touched. This was completely fine, and made for some bordering-on-hilarious moments of hip grabbing to correct wayward thrusting. What was a little harder to bear was the insistence on taking it s...l....o....w - we were permitted to laboriously master one move only per song (largely Elvis Presley and other tracks of that era featuring the ukelele). There were many, many tracks of hip swinging and gentle hand waves with the occasional "aloha" or "sun" or "island" movement to inject elements of a story into our dance, movements which I've decided fortunately do have some potential to be adapted for general club move-busting.

Surprisingly challenging was the hand cramping situation we had to contend with after about 20 minutes of gluing our thumbs to our forefingers. Visible thumbs are the height of ugliness in hula dance and must be hidden during hand waving at all costs. Unfortunately, years of computer use have left my hands permanently in a claw-like deformed state and serious pain ensued from attempts to move them fluidly. I had to let them drop to avoid a seizure.

After an hour and a half of Elvis, hip wiggling, cramped hands and a disappointing lack of sweat, I had to wonder whether the belly chuckles provided the class (largely by personal efforts to slow hips down to an acceptable pace) will be enough to keep me going for 7 more weeks. For me hula dance is a bit like reading two pages of a book in an hour, with ukeleles. Kind of relaxing but also unnaturally slow and a bit painful. I'm attempting to reserve judgment until further classes and until I've procured a bona fide skirt which I'm hoping will make all the difference.