Summer, sun and strawberries

My first month here in Berlin is turning to its end. I've had quite the time getting aquainted with work and my living surroundings. My flat mate noticed something about me though, that seems to be a pattern for me. She told me she'd said to a friend of hers: "My flat mate has only been here for a few weeks, and already she knows half the city!" I guess she was referring to the evening we went to have chinese food a couple of week ago, where we met one of my collagues on the way... But I do have a tendancy to get to know a lot of people in a short amount of time. Then again I am a what you in finnish would call "sosiaalihuora". Which translates into something as horrible as "social whore". I simply like to meet and get to know new people.

That was the case a week ago on wednesday on the subway. I was sitting on the bench, and this girl at the other end kept glancing my way. Finally she got up and asked me in English if my shirt was from H&M. She had noticed it becuause, she had the same one. It turned out she was a Canadian intern, who had been in Berlin three days so far and couldn't speak any German. We got to talking and decided to meet up for cocktails soon.

What I love about big cities is the commuter traffic possibilities. The subways, trams and trains are some much more comfortable than buses. As most people know, the Germans don't speak English all too well. I mean all even all their tv-shows are dubbed, so where are they supposed to learn it? I've noticed that the announcements in the trains and trams are quite interesting. I really don't know how the people who decide about announcement have thought that a person who doesn't speak German is supposed to understand the following sentence: "Please change here for a train service to Hauptbahnhof." Well you might be able to guess that Hauptbahnhof means main train station, but when you add a nice German accent to the announcement it all gets even more interesting.

The river Spree runs right outside of the main train station and a few entrepreneurs have taken advantage of all the free space. Since the main train station was built only after the wall got torn down, the city centre(s) aren't really located around the station. When you compare it with many other German cities, where the city is build around the station, it's quite different. The station is located in the government district, not too far away from the Reichstag (parliament building). So what I wanted to tell you about was the beach bar(s) next to the station. The first one to open at the location was BundesPresseStrand, which literally means national press beach. It was opened in 2003 by an unemployed journalist and after that a few others have followed with more beach bars. The beach bar is open every day, when you can come with kids and just enjoy the sun, and at night it turns to a beach club. I went there on Saturday with Matt and three of his friends, and it was divine!


Chilling at BundesPresseStrand


The best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between
East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War

Last weekend the final in the German football cup DFB-Pokal (Deutsche Fussball-Bund e.V.) was played at the Olympic Stadium here in Berlin. The game was played between Schalke 04 and MSV Duisburg. The city was full of football fans and we watched the game along with the fans at Kurfürstendamm. The atmosphere was great and Schalke 04 ended up winning 5 to 0. The fans were going crazy, but it was fun!

A nice cocktail/sheesha bar called
Chischkhan close to my place

Last week when I went dancing Thomas and Katrin told me about another dancing place, that's outside and open on Tuesdays. So this week I decided to check it out. The place is called Amphitheater, more commonly Monbijou. It's directly by the river Spree right across the Bode museum. Since the summer nights here aren't light like the one we have in Finland, it can get very cozy and romantic with coloured lights and music. They have dancing there every night with different genres. Tuesdays would be my nights, because then they have ChaCha, Walzer & Co on the menu. If you want to have a look, here's the link: http://www.amphitheater-berlin.de/tanz.html.

Matt and Yasmin enjoying the best sides of summer

Ballroom dancing and piggie chasing

This week was pure hard work! No, just kidding, actually I had a quite comfy week at the office. I’m really starting to get the hang of things. I was able to work most of the week quite independently. This week I only translated one document, but did a lot of project management. The work gets easier all the time, because I’m starting to understand how the project is built. What makes it complicated is the fact that different customers want that their data to be handled in different ways. This means that we need to use different kinds of programs. It helps that I’ve been working mostly with one client, so I’ve become pretty fluent with their projects. The important thing is that I really enjoy the work, and the days pass by so fast, that I barely notice.

On Tuesday I and my flat mate Miriam decided to go to a flea market in Kreutzberg. She picked me up at work but when we arrived to the place where the flea market, there was nothing there. The weather was amazing though, so we decided to have an ice cream. We went to what is about to become my favorite place, the ice cream salon tanne B. After ice cream we headed to Prenzlauer Berg to meet one of my good friends Harm. Harm works as the German representative for a Finnish flooring company and he gets around a lot. We met in Finland a bit over two years ago, and every time he comes to Tampere, we get together for dinner or drinks. We don’t see each other all that often, but we’ve become quite good friends. We started off at a wine shop/bar in Prenzlauer Berg, which is owned by the husband of a common friend of me and Harm. We had a couple of glasses of the most delicious sparkling rosé wine after which we went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant quite close by. We ordered a round of dumplings, which I tasted for the first time. They had a various selection of dumplings, so we decided to order many different kinds and share. For those who don’t know what dumplings are: they are balls made of dough with different fillings. We had dumplings with lamb, cow, pig, veggies and shrimp, which I liked the most. They were all quite good, but I don’t think it will be my favorite thing to eat.

Dumplings Shanghai and Lamb

After stopping by at a sheesha bar we ended the evening at a bar called Graues Kloster where our common friend Gesa was playing lp’s. Graues Kloster is a very cozy little cellar bar in Prenzlauer Berg which seemed to have a quite regular clientele. There was a couple in the bar - Thomas and Katrin - that I met in Berlin in March and it turned out that they like dancing. And I’m not talking about clubbing; no they are doing ballroom dancing! They told me about a restaurant called Clärchens Ballhaus, where they have ballroom dancing, and they asked me to go with them on Thursday. I was totally in! But man, why did I leave my dancing shoes in Finland?! On Thursday I could barely wait for it to be evening. When I came to Clärchens at about 9.30 pm Thomas and Katrin were already there, along with some more of their friends. One of the guys asked me to dance and we started off with a discofox, which is a bit like the Swedish dance bugg. The atmosphere was great and I got to dance a lot of different dances including rumba, chacha, Argentinean tango (which really is different to Finnish tango), jive, quickstep, wiener waltz and slow waltz. It was a nice mix of different people on different levels, some were just beginners and some were dancing very professionally. I enjoyed it all so much that I decided to start going there every week! Thomas and Katrin also told me about some other dancing place, which apparently is outside. They said it opens on Monday and that they are going there on Tuesday, when they have standard dancing. I think I can’t help but go…

This weekend we made a house switch with Matt’s parents. They went to Plessow, where Matt lives, because they wanted to come to Berlin and we took over the animal feeding at Matt’s parents’ farm. Our plans for Saturday changed quite the bit when the two little pigs got out through the fence and ran away. We chased them around for a bit over two hours without result. Finally we got sick of the very fast pigs and made a car tour in Matt’s super cute Mini. We went to Enschede in Holland and did still have a nice afternoon. While in Holland Matt’s neighbor called and said that the pigs were on their way to the next village. We figured that whatever, they’re gone. Surprisingly this morning when Matt went to feed the animals, the pig were back on the front yard, and he even managed to get them back in the shed. He was very happy getting to tell me about it, because he got quite frustrated yesterday while chasing them around. All in all the weekend was very nice. Life on a farm can be very calming, especially when there are two oh-so-cute four-week-old puppies to play with.

Piggies on the run

Playing makes tired - especially when you're only four weeks old!

Three friends of mine are coming to Berlin on Thursday and they’re bringing me bread and chewing gum, yay! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the three of them and I’m excited! We’ll see what the week brings…

Concrete adventures

Finally it was weekend. Well I can't really say "finally", because I actually enjoy my job so far and I had a very interesting week. It was still great to get a feel of weekend. I have really never had a job with office hours, which equals that this is my first job with free weekends and evenings. So my first real free weekend was here and now afterwards I can say that I could really get used to it! I had a great weekend getting to know Berlin a little better. And miles and miles of concrete behind me.

On Friday I left Berlin though and headed to Plessow, which is a small village close to Potsdam. My boyfriend Matt goes to school and lives there. He goes to a customs school and lives in a dorm on the school area. He had planned to have a barbeque with a couple of friends and I was invited. The day was amazing and warm and we even got to enjoy some time of sun while barbequing. I had a got a bottle of rosé wine to drink while the others had beer. Well here's where I faced the first problem: there was no bottle opener. Crap! Somehow Matt finally managed to open the bottle (after hitting it against a tree and digging the cork with a knife) and I got to drink one glass of my rose while having some grilled chicken and potatoe salad. Yummie! After our barbeque we headed back to Berlin to spend the rest of the weekend there.

Matt was cutting the meat for Lenny

On Saturday we decided to have a look at Kreuzberg. After changing the underground line two times we finally got to Görlitzer Bahnhof. I'm starting to get the picture of how big Berlin really is. It takes ages to get from one side of the city to the other. From my apartment in Charlottenburg I need about 30 minutes to get to Kreuzberg, and those are both parts of the city which are relatively close to the centre! Anyways it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the sky was blue. We started off at Oranienburger Strasse and walked around a bit. After a while we decided it was time for ice cream, so we headed to a ice cream place my collague Chris had recommended me. I was sure worth the recommedation, the ice cream was divine. Matt had coconut and lychee and I had carrot-orange and strawberry. If you go to Berlin, I can only recommend the ice cream at this place! It's called Eissalon tanne B and is situated at Lausitzer Platz in Kreuzberg close the the underground station Görlitzer Bahnhof.

Enjoying some delicious ice cream on the most beautiful summer day

In the afternoon we got some sparkling wine and strawberries and sat down at Urbanhafen and just enjoyed the sun. Urbanhafen is a great (and popular) place to hang out when the weather is good. It's more alternative when it comes to the people and there's a lot of green. Next to the Urbanhafen I discovered a nice coffee shop, which seems to be quite new, because I can't find any information about it online. I just went there to use the bathroom, so I don't really remember what it was called, but I sure know I have to go there again! It was on the corner of Carl-Herz-Ufer and Baerwaldstrasse, that's all I know.

Sunshine!

While chilling at Urbanhafen I was checking out my tourist map and found something interesting. Ritter Sport has a so called chocolate world called BunteSchokoWelt, where you can have a Ritter Sport chocolate bar made just the way you like it. The most interesting thing about the place was the making of the chocolate though. I was a bit disappointed, because the rest was made only for commercial reasons. There was a huge shop with different Ritter Sport products and upstairs a café and a small round where you could see how the process of making chocolate goes. After a piece of chocolate cake (which was delicious though!) and an ice coffee we walked along to the Brandenburg Gate. We were going to the Room of Silence when all of a sudden someone put on some music and everyone around us just started dancing! They were dancing swing dances and the atmosphere was just amazing! I wish my feet hadn't been to sore to dance. I decided I have to get Matt to take a dance course, because I really can't be with someone who doesn't know how to dance, I mean I love it so much!

All kinds of chocolate at BunteSchokoWelt

Born to hand jive!

We were actually planning on going out in the evening, but we ended up being so tired that we just went to sleep.

Today had two highlights. In the morning we went to a breakfast buffet in an arabic restaurant. The place is called Assafir and it is a cozy restaurant on Wilmersdorfer Strasse, which is the main street in Charlottenburg. The restaurant was decorated in an arabic theme with red sofas and golden decorations. They had so many different things to eat there and everything was totally delicious! I got to think about my trip to Egypt last Christmas, and I realized I hadn't tried almost any of those dishes there, but they still reminded me of the trip.

Moroccan mint tea. Delicious.

In the afternoon we went to Werder, which is a small town 30 minutes with the train from Berlin. Today was the last day of the 133 flower festival Baumblütenfest. It is basically another reason for the people to drink and have fun. The festival is arranged every year to celebrate the blooming trees. The idea came from a fruit farmer called Wilhelm Wils who thought it would be great to give all nature lover an opportunity to enjoy the blooming fruit trees. The first festival was arranged in 1879 and all the people who came to enjoy the flowers weren't of course a bad thing for the local businesses. The festival got bigger and bigger every year and at it's highest the number of people coming to the festival was in 1998 with 750 000 participants. Nowadays the number is around 500 000 every year. This year the trees bloomed way too early, so when the festival started the blooming was already over. I was very sad about this, because Matt told me how beautiful it usually is. I did enjoy it anyway. The weather couldn't have been better and we walked around for a couple of hours and tasted some fruit wines. I can understand why people keep coming to the festival - the wine. It wasn't really for me, they were all way too sweet and many with a very high percentage of alcohol - up to 17%! What I could have done was trying every stand with different kind of snacks, there were a lot!!

A bar boat at the river Havel

Looking on to the mainland from the festival island in Werder (Havel)

I have one week behind me now and it's been amazing so far. I can't wait to see what Berlin has to give to in the next three months!

Oh and I have to say: GO LEIJONAT! You've done well so far, keep up the good game!

Ich bin ein(e) Berliner(in)

Yes, I am officially a citizen of Berlin now. I went to the citizen centre yesterday early in the morning. The centre opened at 8 am and at 7.48 when I arrived, there were already about 30 people in line before me. I think I got through quite fast though, most of time I was waiting for my turn. At 8.50 I continued my way to the finance centre to get a tax number. The weather was kinda crappy again, so I decided to go one stop on the underground, since I had my monthly ticket now. The underground apparently didn't think my idea was that good though, because it never arrived. So I had to bike in the rain, which sucked! Where's the amazing weather that everyone talked about? The finance centre was quickly taken care of and I was at work at 10 am.

The beautiful old building where the citizen centre is.

I finished work quite early and hurried home, where my boyfriend already waited for me. After grabbing a quick coffee we headed out for a small Charlottenburg-tour. I love all the small streets, the old houses and the parks. It really is a beautiful part of Berlin. Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf is the fourth biggest of Berlins 12 boroughs with its 320.322 inhabitants, but only the sixth biggest in areal (64,72 sqm). It's main sights are the Technical University of Berlin, the Berlin University of Arts, the opera Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as the Olympic Stadium and Charlottenburg Palace, which I live right next to.

My next door neighbour: the Charlottenburg Palace

Why aren't our sewers in Finland as pretty as this one?

Today was the most interesting day at work so far. Yesterday I got a translation assignment, which I started translating this morning. It was great to come to the office when I didn't have to start with asking for things to do. I also got my very own account and got to start managing some projects. The day went by so fast, because I had stuff to do! More of this!

A view from the bridge Schlossbrücke outside my house

It's summer! This beautiful park is on the way to my nearby grocery store.

Tonight I met up with a collague, Chris. He showed be around in Kreuzberg and I finally got to go somewhere other than my own part of the city. Chris has a background as interesting as mine (or even more so!). He was born in Hamburg, grew up in Stockholm, studied in Lübeck and lived in Vienna and New York before coming to Berlin. That's quite a lot for a 31-year-old! Now I have someone to practise my Swedish with, which is great! And I do have to say, his Swedish is very good for someone who hasn't lived in Sweden for 15 years. After walking around for almost two hours we ended up in a Sheesha café, where the sheesha was probably the best I've ever had! On the way home I was amazed my the warmth of Berliners, everyone was smiling to me and even spontaneous chats took place in the underground. I can't help falling in love with this city!

A view from the bridge Admiralbrücke over the Landwehr Canal

The flat and the job

My second day in Berlin. I've worked a couple of long days, so I don't really have anything exciting to tell about the city. I've got quite a lot done though.

We arrived in Berlin on Sunday at about 8 pm. We were supposed to get a mattress from a girl that was moving house, and she had promised to keep her mattress for us. But when we called her, she said she'd supposedly sent us a message saying that the mattress was sold, which she surely didn't. After stating that, she hung up on us. Really rude! Luckily Berlin is a big city, so after checking out the eBay ads we got another mattress, a brand new one and for only 25 euros. I slept well that night.

The beautiful view onto the yellow fields taken from the car on the way to Berlin.

My flat is situtated in Charlottenburg, which is amazing because my job is there as well. It is as so called "altbau", which is either an old house or a house built in a special way. These houses are mostly caracterized by brick walls, wooden ceilings and special windows. The rooms are also very high, at least 3 meters. These houses have their pros and cons just like any house, but I love the high rooms and big windows, and the wide window panes are also amazing. The cons are for example that the heating is not very up to date and showering can be from hell. I found that my apartment is handling these thing quite well though.

My room.

The kitchen.

The apartment has two bedrooms, a long hallway, a big kitchen and a quite roomy bathroom. My room has two big windows, a wooden floor and it is completely furnished. One of the walls are light blue, the other one has a printed wall paper, which I totally love! I have a big bed, one huge closet, a desk, a chest of drawers and a couple of wall shelves - everything one could need. I was very lucky to get such an amazing apartment at the good price that I did. I really like it here!

My amazing wallpaper!

Yesterday I started my internship at the translation office 4-Text. Berlin greeted my of my first day with a cold wind and rain. When I after what felt like a endless bike ride I found the office. My boss started of by showing me the office, which is the entire top floor of the building. He also introduced me to the project management teams and some of the translators. After the tour I was given a test translation (German-Finnish). My day went on with getting to know the translation program Felix 4, which has a updated version: Felix 5, but some for some customers the translations are still made with the older program. The afternoon I spent with one guy from my project management team (Team E). He showed me all the project management programs (there are MANY). At this point it was already 5 pm and I'd been at the office for good 7 hours. By the way, I am allowed to manage my own working hours, it's just important that I'm there at least partly at the same time as my team or my supervisor. So that's super!

I finished my first day with some grocery shopping. My flat mate came with me to show me where the grocery stores are. I got some flowers for my room and the did what I love to do when I'm in Germany: I bought bread from the bakery! Yum!

The bathroom.

Today I was supposed to register myself as a Berlin resident and get a tax number. Late last nigth I realized that the citizen centre doesn't open until 11, so I decided to go tomorrow instead at 8 am sharp. Oh boy, that will be a early morning! This morning I go myself a ABC-ticket, which means that I can use the metro, the tram and the bus unlimited in all three zones of Berlin. At the counter where I was getting the intern id-card the I had an interesting experience. The man was quite nice, he seemed a bit bored. I gave him my papers and a passport photo for the id-card. When he tried to attach the photo on the card the machine somehow broke down and the he startd cursing. He turned around and got scissors with which he tried to fix the problem. After realizing that I was not fixable he started cursing again, and very loudly. I though, what will come next, will he start yelling at me? But no, he turned to me and said calmly and with an apologizing smile: "I'm sorry, my maschine broke down. Can you go the other counter?" It was very funny but kinda scary at the same time. Well, most the important thing is of course that I got the id-card thing taken care of.

Today at work was pretty similar as yesterday. First a test translation, English-Finnish this time. Then learning more project management, which I find quite interesting. There's just a lot of programs that I have to learn to manage, before I can manage the projects. In the afternoon I made a translation with Felix 5 and I think I'm starting to get the hang of how the program works. It is actually not that complicated, I just have to learn the shortcuts. I finished off at 4.30 pm, after which I made a small tour in the centre of my part of the city, Charlottenburg.

The main street of Charlottenburg is Wilmersdorfer Strasse, which is partly a walking zone. On this street there's most shops that you need including a shopping mall with all the main clothing shops and more. I got myself a ergonomic pillow at JYSK, which, for those of you who doesn't know, is an international retail chain that sells 'everything for the home'. It is originally from Denmark but the name of the shop is different in different countries. Anyways I'm excited to go to sleep tonight just to try the pillow. I got myself a summer dress as well, so please let the weather get warmer soon!

My friend the owl in the bathroom. Wonder if he has a name... Hmm...

Farewells and first impressions

Back in Tampere on Thursday I knew I had a lot to do before I was ready to take off to Germany. The last paperwork was task number one. I headed to the university and met with two international coordinators to get my last papers signed. After waiting for the other one for 20 minutes, because she went to some birthday, I got everything ready and went to the park to meet with a good friend. After a while another friend joined us at a terrace and I had my first "terrace cidre" this summer. Probably the last one as well - they don't really drink cidre in Germany. My other friend had just bought a sheesha, so after enjoying our cidre we headed back to the park to smoke a little bit. At the park three more friends joined us, so had a great chance to say goodbye to a lot of friends at the same time - even though I ended up seeing one of them like five more times (which equaled five more times for farewells).




On Friday I had my last performance with my choir, or well, part of it. We had a Vappu-gig at the university and another one at the local retirement home. It was fun and I got really sad about not singing at the concert in two weeks.

Then it was Saturday, and time to say bye to Finland. In the morning theguy who's sub-renting my room came to pick up the key. I'm so happy I got everything worked out! When I arrived in Bremen - 25 minutes ahead of schedule (go Ryanair!) and stepped out of the airplane it was amazing! No need for a jacket anymore, because it was summer. My boyfriend picked me up and all the way home to his parents I was amazed about how beautiful everything is. The trees are all green and everything is blooming! When got to my boyfriends parents' house lunch was ready. Asparagus soup as a starter and potatoes, schitzel, asparagus and hollandaise sauce. I was so happy, because I've been looking forward to eating asparagus for weeks. And it sure was worth the wait, it was totally delicious!




My boyfriends parents live at a kind of a vacation farm in northern Germany. They have a pony, cows, a duck, a dog, rabbits, cats and four apartments which people can rent for their vacation. So last week their dog had puppies, a girl and a boy. They are 10 days old today and oh so cute! If my work didn't start tomorrow I'd just stay here and take care of the babies. While I was smooching with the puppies my boyfriend fix up a bike for me to take to Berlin. It's a granny bike in blue and yellow and I just love it!






My fun-filled Saturday ended with two birthdays. First a quick stop at one of my boyfriends friends for cake and coffee (and sparkling wine...), then to the main event of the evening. My boyfriends ex-boss was celebrating his 50th birthday together with two others and it was a huge party. It was a beautiful, rustic hotel in the countryside. The hosts started off with greeting their guests in the back garden with drinks and a band playing nice "elevator music". After mingling for a while and greeting all the guests the party was moved inside where the huge buffet dinner was. The hosts gave each a short speech and a quartet sang fours songs. Then it was time for the buffet which was full off bavarian food: frühlingsknödel (a potato dish), mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, champignons in cream sauce, white sausage, pretzels, and a lot of pig dishes. The dessert was fresh strawberries and Bavarian cream which is a kind of sweet vanilla cream. It was all very delicious, and the party was fun!

Today were off to Berlin. I'm very excited to meet my landlord / flat mate and see the apartment. I can't believe I'm actually here!