My third home and starting a new section

My Saturday seems to have dissappeared today, mainly because I approached my street last night as the sky was tinged with deep blue and dusky pink of the morning, post Abschied(farewell)party. We have just finished our language course this week before the start of the winter semester next week. So one chapter is ending, and another is starting here. The trees are most definitely autumnal and there is icy mist in the mornings (the picture on the left is in the nice southern area of Dahlem, at the university)

Pre-party we were in a Weinerei - you pay 2euro entrance for a glass, drink what wine you fancy, and pay your estimation of wine cost on your way out (and for any food they might have put on and you ate). It was a pretty quirky place, decor was lots of trinkets old and new - see the picture on the right (Maybe like Nacy's bordello in Newcastle, though I've never been) and I liked it, and the system seems to work well overall. You get so many little places like that in Berlin. You need to get to know the streets a bit, something I'm not so speedy with.

I've started to feel way more at home now, the culture shock is wearing off. My brain doesn't recognise new unfamiliar faces and attire and attitudes like it did at first - I wasn't used to hearing so much turkish, seeing so many spikes and black leather on one person, so many bottles of beer in the hands of people on the UBahn (its legal here), being told things in such a blunt way (the Berliner schnauzer - 'harsh but not harshly meant', theres even a campaign about it - not just German directness), so many unkown food items in the supermarket, and so on.
I'm noticing myself finding all the strange and new things are now the things I am fond of, that I belong to just a little more, as I get to know the routines and patterns of the area, of the city. Home number three, if only for a year.

I now have my timetable pretty much sorted, and am quite happy with it. A bit in uni each day, apart from Friday, and hopefully the courses should be good too. 'Kulturelles Leben in Berlin' (German language learning topic, naturally in German), English historical syntax + Chaucer (in Eng), German orthography (in German). I finally knew when I was free for sport, and of course so many courses had filled up by then, meaning rather than intended dance I'm doing beginner's aerobics! We'll see what that is like, and well, the semester in general. Sunday still to come, then the first week of Wintersemester 2010/11...

Kish.