Die Hard Three

After class today I make my way to meet Bénédicte and her boyfriend Harry at Schlesiches Tor U-Bahn station. They’ve got the whole evening planned out. First we walk to a bridge to watch the sun set – amazing.

Then we head to the old train repair station where they’ve revitalized what was probably a pretty depressing place. They even have a skatepark – yes, hello, hospital please.

The best part of the evening is this cool bar that serves 3 euro meals on Thursdays. It’s in the old neighbourhood where Béné and Harry used to live.

When we arrive the place is empty. After a while it starts to fill up. The food is out of this world – mashed potatoes, apricot chutney vegetables, fried eggplant, green salad. The dessert is this apple strudel thing. I think I know where I’m going for supper next Thursday night.

There are three girls sitting at the bar. The one on the left has a Chinese symbol tattooed on the back of her neck. You can tell from the fading that she’s had it for a lot longer than neck tattoos have been fashionable. The middle one is so plain but she’s laughing the whole time and this makes her more attractive. The one on the end has a dozen piercings in her left ear but none in her right. It’s a very strange asymmetry.

The whole place looks like I was in charge of its construction. There’s a lot of wood, unfinished drywall, posters everywhere. By some miracle it made it to a functional state and that seems to be enough. It’s the comfort place for a lot of people.

Your comfort place is a bar or restaurant where you are totally at ease. It’s not to say that everyone has one but those who do are very aware of the appeal. I think one of the reasons I like it here is that I feel like it’s mine – and I’ve only been here two hours. I stole this term from my brother who used it to describe a bar in New York that my friend Rachel recommended. She suggested it as a rendezvous for several of us who were visiting NYC. At 17:00 it seemed like a bit of a dive, but 2 hours later with a couple of pints under our belts, a delicious chicken-pot pie resting peacefully in our stomachs, and some good friends around the table, it had taken on a whole new vibe. More bars should have sofas.

I feel that providing a picture of this place would detract from its appeal because an image could never do it justice. It might be worth a thousand words but they would be the wrong ones.

Our table now has four strangers sitting at it. There’s five of us on a sofa on one side and the others are on chairs. Everyone is smiling and switching effortlessly between German and English and French. The smell of smoke is just faint enough to make me not leave. This will change in about 3 minutes when one (or more) of the eight people around the table will light one up. Berlin might be one of the last cities in the western world where one can smoke in a bar. I will celebrate the ban when it arrives.

The DJ is actually playing his music at a reasonable volume. It seems to me that in your average bar, most times the DJ is alone by himself while the rest of the patrons engage in conversation. He’s in his zone and he ends up blasting his music. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

At the end of the night I can’t help but think that if we’d arrived 2 hours later than we did, I would not have enjoyed myself at all. Getting there early allowed us to secure a spot on the sofa, get some food in us, and enjoy a few smokeless minutes before things got busy. Berlin is an awesome city.

I’m expecting my first paycheque from the Internet people tomorrow. I started this blog exactly two weeks ago and I was told that I would be paid bi-weekly (every two weeks, not twice a week). I can understand if there are some delays. Usually the first paycheque is the hardest one. Maybe I made a mistake with my banking information and with the timezones and international dialing they’ve been having some difficulty getting in contact with me. Once, when I was in Tunisia, I slept outside in the desert and my signal dropped down to only two bars. Stuff like this happens all the time when you’re traveling, you just got to learn to roll with it.

I spent a lot of time shopping around for the right employer. Until you try, you have no idea what a hassle this is. My plan with this post is to spare you some of the headaches I’ve experienced by documenting the whole thing.

First, you need to advertise: get your name out there, promote your business plan, and stuff like that. I suggest using Greg’s List or Kilij. Both of these services are top notch and they are totally free. This way, it’s more money for you – you’re effectively cutting out the middleman. Note: they are going to ask for a credit card but don’t worry – they are legitimate businesses. The credit card is just to verify that you are a real person and not some scam artist.

Next you need to evaluate all the proposals. This is actually way easier than it sounds. At this point I’m going to warn you that there are a lot of crazies out there. When you put yourself out on the Internet you’re going to get a lot of people that will say things via email they would never say to your face. They will mock your idea (mostly out of jealously that they didn’t come up with it first) and use lots of swears. They will tell you you’re wasting your time and that what you’re doing is dangerous. Some will even go so low as to impersonate your friends and family. It’s very easy to do that on the Internet – so don’t be fooled.

The final step is to select the winning bid. After tossing out all the bad ones you will be left with one or two, well-written, very well-thought-out proposals. Select the one you like the best and then complete the transaction. In my case I decided to partner up with a very polite gentleman who brings some very interesting opportunities to the table. It appears that we can both benefit from my business as he has money that is locked in a bank account and I have a mechanism (through my business plan) to release the funds. I’m very excited about all this.

Well, that’s enough for today – I have to get to class. I’ll write another post next week when I’m celebrating my first paycheque.

U-Bahn's closed

I’m at the pub writing my next post. There’s this German girl next to me and she tells me that she met a Canadian guy last year in Berlin and he told her that there would be a Canadian mission to the moon in ten years.

Apparently our government is training astronauts on Devon Island (full disclosure: I have not idea where this is). Now the guy himself is not an astronaut as he will be too old when the mission starts. He says he’s a medical doctor and an officer of the Canadian Army who is helping to train the real astronauts.

I really don’t know what to say. I ask her if he scored, she laughs and says, “no”. That’s good because this must be the worst inflate-your-own-self-worth story I’ve ever heard. I can seen this guy now:

• I’m in the military
• I’m an officer
• I’m a medical doctor
• I was in Afghanistan
• I’m helping to train astronauts in the Canadian Arctic for a super-secret mission to the moon

I wonder at which point in his story he lost her.

This morning I went to go check up on Eva who has not been feeling well. She has a sore throat and finds it difficult to talk. We’ve worked out a system of blinks and pointing as a way of communicating. After a few minutes she blinks me that her hearing is fine and that I can use my voice. I haven’t done my homework and I ask Eva if she will do it for me. She’s finished it in about two minutes – it would have taken me over fifteen.

I somehow get lost between the subway station and the school. I’m afraid I’m going to be late but somehow I get there early.  Today we’re continuing our work on the letter K. We’re put into groups and are given the following task: we are rental property owners (just like the Pope) and have to write up an old-style newspaper advertisement describing our property. After we’ve completed our ad, we have to give it to the next group and they have to translate it from newspaper speak (e.g. lg 3 bdrm apt) into proper German.

My group seems pretty cool. Fernando is from Spain, Victor Mexico, and Simon is from Denmark. I suggest we design an apartment that violates the laws of physics (or at least the local building code). They all think it’s a pretty good idea and we start to work. I’m skeptical that we are going to be successful as we are not yet allowed to use the last half of the alphabet. Here is the English translation:

1 rm in a 15 rm apt, 1 bthrm, 150 sq m, no kitchen, furnished, pets mandatory, musicians welcome, 420 friendly, 1 700 Eur per pers, pr mth.

At first the other group does not know what to make of our rental property, but then they have some fun with it. Now break is over. Back to work.

“I am a human being” is just another way of saying “I am not a robot”. But part of me wishes I was a robot. Think about it: you’d be super-strong, calculations involving mathematics would be a joke, and you could turn off your emotions whenever you wanted. I think that last one would be the most useful, especially if you were heading into some big negotiations, like the merger of two large multi-national corporations. This way, your opponents couldn’t use psychological manipulation – well they could try but it wouldn’t work.

The only way the other side would be able to figure you out is if they had a robot of their own that was conducting the negotiations on their behalf. But then you run into the problem that if both robots are in autonomous mode (this would of course be a pre-condition in using one in the negotiations) there would be a non-zero chance of them falling into a Turing Loop. The only way out of this is if one of the robots loses power. And that’s a hell of a way to conclude the negotiations, let me tell you.

I’m bringing this up because last year Deutsche Bahn fired all it’s train conductors and replaced them with robots. It’s still too early to tell but the decision has been an complete success. And the service has never been better. In the first six months alone delays longer than 1 minutes have dropped to zero. I’ve read some reports that in early 2012 they will be starting Phase Two. I hope it’s as successful as Phase One. I can’t think of anything more exciting than having robots fly all the passenger jets originating from and destined to Frankfurt Airport.

My evaluation test has put me in the A22 class. This is the highest level one can go before getting to B1. I think they screwed up and I should be a level or two lower. I really don’t like starting in the middle without at least refreshing the earlier stuff. We’re beginning with the letter K and we don’t even review A-J. It’s really hard. And then there’s the numbers… I remember the base-10 integers from one to ten but eleven to infinity are all a blur. I’m terrified that teacher is going to ask me in front of everyone to multiply 245 times 231 and I won’t know the answer. And I’ve paid a thousand euros for this?!?! Does it include health insurance for the inevitable stress-induced heart attack? Probably not.

I recognize the first number, but the one to the right of the decimal is a complete mystery.

Despite all of this a small part of me is happy we’re on the letter K. I’m very comfortable in the part of the alphabet as K comes right after J (one of my many monikers). But in a few months we will be on to the more complex letters: X, Y, U, Q, W, Z – I really do hate this part of the alphabet (you know there’s a reason for why they put them all at the end). If I were in charge I’d remove all these letters from all the Boggle and Scrabble games in all my house and Friday nights would become that much more awesome.

By the way, I’m aware of the irony of using words that contain these letters in order to decry them, so don’t bother pointing that out.

My first day at German school is pretty good. The classroom is a decent size with four large walls, one of which is made up almost entirely of windows. I find the desks to be a bit small and the chairs are kinda uncomfortable. The desks are those six-sided hexagonal ones that are actually two desks back to back. The surface is a sturdy plastic and the legs (there are four per desk half) are made of powder-coated tubular metal. Plastic inserts prevent the feet from scratching the floor.

By the beginning of the second hour I start to think those robots in the Matrix were on to something. The classroom starts to get really get warm before the instructor opens the windows. It’s those cool German windows with the handle that locks the window closed when in the down position, opens it wide like a regular door in the middle position and opens at the top when in the up position. A very clever design. I’m going to see if I can bring back a kit and make one at home. Now that the windows are all the way open the room cools down to a decent temperature.

Easily my second-favourite feature of the classroom is the whiteboard – this thing is super cool. It’s on vertical rails so that the teacher can effortlessly change its height. No more straining to reach the top or bending over to write at the bottom. It’s also on wheels so that it can easily be repositioned around the room.

The dry-erase markers are even better. There are four colours (red, green, blue, and black) and each has its own inkwell that holds the marker when not in use. This has two functions. The first is that it keeps the tip from drying out. The second is that it refuels the marker. This is a great system as it is probably way cheaper over the lifetime of the marker (the tips will eventually wear out) but it probably costs more initially.

On my way to school this morning I noticed that the you-are-here sticker on one of the maps at the tram stop was in the wrong location. So I penned a letter to the BVG (OC Transpo Berlin) to inform them of the problem. I am curious how log it will take them to remedy the problem.

Hallo

Ich bin Jason von Kanada.

Ich entdeckte ein Problem mit einer Ihrer Karten.

Es gibt zwei Karten an der S-Bahn-Station Landesburger Allee und Petersburger Str. Der gelbe Kreis auf einer Karte ist an der falschen Stelle.

Die angehängten Bilder haben alle Informationen.

Bitte mailen Sie mir, wenn Sie mehr Informationen benötigen.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.

Jason

location-of-nicht-gut-karte

nicht-gut

gut

Anyone have any guesses on how long this takes to get fixed?

I’m not a big fan of showering in other people’s homes. There’s just too much that can go wrong. The problems are reduced if they have a guest bathroom but it’s still not the same as using your own or the one in the hotel/hostel. The owners have everything configured just the way they like it and then I show up and ruin everything. I think this is because there are too many variables to keep track of. Just off the top of my head there is:

• Water temperature (left and right or single tap)
• Maximum temperature (so you don’t scald yourself)
• Pressure
• Shower head height
• Shower head angle (up / down)
• Shower head angle (left / right)
• Shower curtain orientation
• The placement of various hygiene products in the shower
• Original water output (tap or shower)
• The detachable shower head (on the wall or by the tap)
• Towel placement

When staying with friends I try to be as non-disruptive as possible. I usually do okay until I have to clean myself. After my marathon train ride / Oktoberfest / 5 km walk, I arrived at Eva’s in need of a shower. In retrospect I should have just taken a bath (but I’m sure I would have screwed that up too).

To start, I set the water pressure way to high, I had the shower curtain positioned improperly, and I changed the height of the shower head. Those three things resulted in water being sprayed on the toilet paper and all over the floor.

I pre-positioned the towel too far away so I had to step out of the shower to get it. I smashed my knee on the sink (because I got out of the tub on the wrong side of the curtain) and splashed even more water on the floor. And there was no way I was going searching for rags to clean up the water. I would have ended up using a facecloth or something.

I think I also moved her stuff around to make space for my shaving / shower gear. It’s highly unlikely that I got everything back the way it was before I arrived.

I’m pretty sure I also did some other things I’m not even aware of. I would normally propose a solution to a problem like this, however the only ones I can come up with are unthinkable (and yet somehow I am able to think of them):

1. Stay at home
2. Don’t shower
3. Don’t stay with friends

One third of a three-piece bathroom.

I need to get serious. There are several things I have to accomplish on this trip and I gotta get my ass in gear. The two main ones are

1. Find a place to live in Berlin
2. Register for German school

I somehow manage to get both these things done before 13:00 on my first full day in Berlin.

Eva and I leave around 8:00. She’s afraid she’s going to lose me in the madness of the Berlin public transportation system so she’s wears this bright red coat. I’m immediately saddened because I’m reminded that I didn’t bring any orange with me. We arrive at the Canadian embassy and Eva gives me a tour. The Canadian Tax Payer who was just on French training for 15 weeks almost has a heart attack – it’s a pretty swanky building. I’ve come to expect nothing less from our MFA.

Can be seen from space.

I’ve got an appointment at 10:00 to see a place in Mitte (a neighbourhood in the middle of the city). I arrive early and decide to check out the area. There’s a pub two blocks north that serves pints for 2.3 euros (remember: they don’t tip here in Germany), a grocery store that’s even closer, and a bar that’s 10 meters from the entrance to the apartment. The only downside is that the closest Doner shop is about an eight minute walk away. This is tempered by the fact that it’s open 24 hours.

You can check out the pics yourself. The apartment is not on the main street so it’s super quiet. The only negative I can think of is that it gets a crazy amount of light; it might be difficult to sleep in however this might not be a bad thing. I’m set to move in on the 19th. I’m going to be living off the kindness of strangers until then.

The area is pretty cool. The Berlin Wall used to be right nearby and there are several monuments to it. I like this one.

Living in a new place is going to take some getting used to. While walking around many things seem new and strange. I’m sure that after a few weeks I won’t even notice stuff like this, but until then I’m going to keep snapping photos.

I'm happy to be living in the same neighbourhood as the Dildo King - being in the proximity of royalty will mean an increased level of physical security.

Next up I need to register for my German course. The school is located about a 15 minute walk from the apartment and I can tell from the get-go that it’s going to be a lot different from the French training I took over the summer. The registration process is conducted entirely in German. Everyone there of course knows English but they also understand that the most effective way to learn a second language is to do so in an immersion environment. And when I say everything is in German, I mean everything. The instructions for the placement test are all in German – I mean, how is one supposed to write the test, if one cannot understand the test?

Maybe this *is* the test

So I write the test and the lady informs me I’m a problem case. Tell me something I don’t know. Apparently I’ve scored poorly on the easy part, but I did well on the hard part. She smiles and sends me for my oral evaluation. That takes about five minutes and I’m told to report back tomorrow where I’ll be told what level I’m at. Class starts at 13:15 Tuesday.

That was pretty easy and now I’ve got the whole afternoon off. It’s probably the nicest day of weather I’ve ever experienced in my entire life: 22 degrees, no wind, sunny, no smog, low UV index, no laws against drinking a beer in public. One of the other students and I celebrate the first day of school by eating a döner in the park. Apparently the weather in Berlin was terrible for the whole summer but the rest of the week is supposed to be like today. I’m going to go meet up with Bénédict for a pint at 18:00. I imagine we’ll do so on a patio.

Actually it was on a patio on a canal.

And they were serving Weissbier.