Rythms in Berlin

Its all starting to blur, the days are going quicker - must mean I'm getting used to a tiny corner of life here in Berlin.

At the weekend, me and a couple of friends were going to see jazz... and ended up dancing away to Jewish folk music in the Kutlurbrauerei. Such is Berlin. I was able to see the Ritter sport mini museum/cafe, and wandered around a flohmarkt on Sunday (had my obligatory currywurst now, and enjoyed it well enough!), before skypes and church service (another church visited). Inclusive in this was walking past a storm trooper queueing for his ticket at the UBahn Brandenburger Tor (see picture). It was busy there this weekend, as the marathon was on (rollerskates on Sat, running Sunday). Its one of the five biggest marathons in the world, I chatted to two competitiors on the S-Bahn post event. It was a miserably wet day for it, unfortunately, but you can't be put off by rain if you're serious enough to do a marathon!

This week, classes as usual, went to the choir again (unsure), visited my friend at the student halls in the south of the city. I had a lovely curry meal last night with my flatmate and some of her friends, it was brilliant to just have an easy going food and chat evening, getting to know my flatmate and her friends a bit, especially in German. Its really good to be able to get a spell of pure German language, which can so easily be interrupted here in an international city and language course (and by myself, like now!). Not a great week in wellbeing, but that passes. Found I needed some space in my diary, so Saturday has purposefully been made less empty. This sunday is the 20th anniversary of the mauerfall, and I had no idea until i had already filled it with non-mauer-celebration events! I'll try find a space to celebrate in some way, and I'm looking forward to the meet ups and skypes that I'll be doing anyway :)

We had a brilliant tour of Kreuzberg by one of the tutors this afternoon. I learnt some bits about Berlin at the time of the Mauer. Apparently, there was a strip of the wall, where actually some DDR land was on the west side of the wall, so west berliners out of favour with the police set up their make shift abodes on this few hundred metres of land. Similarly, the DDR owned the SBahn, and West Berlin the Ubahn - hence, the Zoo/something station, split into Sbahn above and Ubahn below, was perfect for drug dealers to zip up the stairs to DDR turf when the west berlin police came. The turkish markets in Kreuzberg are pretty well known too, great to see, despite having to do the whole shoulder-to-shoulder thing most of the way down. I have been most informed about my food options here by reading the wikipedia article on turkish cuisine. Its pretty tasty, hot and greasy, as well as special breads, from what I can tell.. I've only tried lahmacun so far, and a taste of, um a boereck maybe? Wikipedia has the answers.

The University introduction days for (only exchange?) students are this next Wed and Thursday, and course options are open for application as of next week (need to work that out). I have to retake the language test too, to show i can do the next level German as foreign language course. Oh, and sport course applications too. Maybe a dance class?

I think that might actually be all. God bless!