Berlin – Moving Time

After fighting through larger than normal trains on the London tube system due to a few line closures, I finally made my way to Heathrow and settled in for another long wait, as once again, my flight had been delayed. Once we got up in the air it was a very quick and painless flight, especially as I had the whole row to myself because the plane was only about forty percent full.

Upon landing at Berlin Tegel, I waited for my luggage to come out of the carousel and could see Paula waiting on the other side of the glass. It was great to see her again, and I must admit I was relieved to see her, as I would’ve had nowhere to stay and no idea of where to go if she hadn’t been there. I was excited about my new start here in Berlin, but still knew that there would be many challenges, both in my relationship with Paula, and my relationship with the city of Berlin.

The next two days were made up mostly of just spending time with Paula, sleeping, packing and checking out the new apartment. By Neukolln standards, it is pretty sweet. It is not falling apart, nor is it in urgent need of renovation, but the hall floorboards are a different colour to the rest and all the lights come out of the wall rather than the ceiling, so it has plenty of its own ‘character’. Neukolln as an area is nicknamed “Little Istanbul” due to the fact that the population is predominantly Turkish. It is however an area with many students and expats due to the cheapness of the rent and close proximity to the awesome areas of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.

Monday morning we were out of the house by 7:30am to get a van in order to drive to Hamburg and pick up all of Paula’s stuff from storage. Unfortunately the place where Paula had booked the van would only accept drivers with EU licenses, and hence would not let me take a van. We then had to search around for someone who would let me drive it and hence wasted two hours with that. By the time we got the van, picked up the washing machine, and dropped everything off at the new place, including getting that heavy-as-fuck washing machine up the stairs it was nearly two and the drive to Hamburg was at least three hours.

As it turned out, we would not be making the storage facility by closing time, hence we would have to stay with Paula’s Mum in Hamburg overnight. We spent the early evening getting Paula’s wardrobe, and some other stuff from the basement of the Irish pub she used to work at, and then went to her Dads storage locker too get more stuff before driving around for an hour near her Mum’s place looking for a parking spot. As it turns out, Paula is not a very good navigator, and has a fuse that is probably even shorter than mine, so we spent most of the night arguing about directions and yelling at each other before getting over it when we finally found where we were going. We finally got into her mums at 10pm after parking a suburb away and catching the train back. We had a little to eat, and then went to sleep as we had another stupidly early morning ahead of us.

Getting up at 7pm we had to rush to get the train, then jump in the car and hope that we could get to Paula’s storage facility without getting too lost. By some small miracle we got there without a problem, and then saw the sheer amount of crap Paula had put into storage and realized that she, like me, is a self-denying packrat. After playing Tetris with everything in the van for an hour and a bit, we finally got everything in and were ready to make our way back to Berlin. We unfortunately lost ourselves a bit on the autobahn network coming out of Hamburg and cost ourselves another hour and many more arguments. We eventually made it back to Berlin and the apartment at 3pm, and spent the next hour and a half moving stuff in. Paula went van to foyer and I went up the three flights of stairs, giving my legs a workout the likes of which they haven’t seen in five months. We then had to take the van back, which ended up being directly through the center of town and in the middle of peak hour, which wasn’t terribly fun.

Paula then had to go directly to work and I came back to the apartment to try to organize some things like the kitchen and the bed. I also saw blatant theft when I went to the supermarket as a dude walked into the store in front of me, then grabbed a crate of drinks and then walked straight back out the exit as I walked in. I walked around my new home neigbourhood for a while and thought of the many challenges that lie ahead for me. I have many things planned for my time in Berlin. I have a book to write; a language to learn; a marathon to train for and then run; and a job to get. Anything less than accomplishing all these things will be viewed as a complete failure on my part. I’d better get cracking.