Treading Water

It’s now six weeks on in 2010 and the question may be; what is happening in my life in Berlin?

Not much.

I came to Berlin with a list of things that I needed to accomplish for my life here to be a success; Write book, learn language, run marathon, get job and so forth and so on. So far, there aren’t any failures, but there aren’t any successes either.

I am thirteen thousand words into the book. Not breathtaking progress, but progress all the same.
I am in doing a German class. Three hours per day. Monday to Friday. I think I’m getting better, but when even my German girlfriend pretty much refuses to speak German to me because it annoys her, it’s hard to get a valid picture of where I’m at.
The Berlin Marathon is not till late September, so that one is not going to be completed or failed for a while. But I am training. I even joined a gym when it became impossible to train on the icy footpaths. As always though, most of my training could be described as sporadic at best as 20 minutes 4 days a week on the elliptical trainer is hardly going to prepare me for a marathon.
I still have the job at the Irish pub and have actually grown to quite like it. I know what I’m doing, I get along with the people and I get paid in cash at the end of every shift. Unfortunately I’m only getting 1 shift per week and that is not going to cut it with two snowboarding trips coming up and flights from Australia and a return to Canada to pay for.

But I don’t want this to become a sook page, so in other news…

Berlin is still absolutely gorgeous. For a city that is considered by European standard to be more “efficient” than “Beautiful”, it’s doing alright in my book. The days of snow, while cold, are gorgeous and I don’t think I will ever get sick of walking around with my iPod as my only company, just soaking up the images of the streets.
Berlinale (the Berlin International Film Festival) is on at the moment, so there is quite a bit of excitement, but this makes it very difficult to get tickets, however I am hoping to catch some of the Australian films on the bill for a little taste of home.
It’s two weeks before Jax comes over for a weekend visit. I think I have the most fun here when I have people to take out and show the city to. I’ve seen it and Paula doesn’t care, but when we have a visitor, the tour guide comes out in me and I get to show off what I love about this place.
A week after Jax goes and I’m off to France for a snowboarding trip. I’m really looking forward to it, especially considering for most of the summer I assumed I would be snowboarding every day over the winter. It hasn’t quite turned out that way, but I’ll at least get to see if I’ve kept any of skills I found in Japan.

And with that, I’m off. I’ve got homework to do before my class tomorrow. Man, I haven’t had to do homework for eight years…. What a spin out.

Bis Bald (See you soon)