A holiday away from the holiday

When you are unemployed, the weekend can start on Thursday. We are giving Deutsche Bahn a try while visiting our friends in Warsaw over the weekend. I think this is my first time in first class, too; DB had an offer and so first class tickets were the same price as second class tickets. I haven't travelled by train in years (not counting the S-bahn), so I am excited. What makes me even happier is avoiding Ryanair. We can carry as much luggage as we can, and as many liquids as we want = Freedom!

The fall of the wall

So, that was that then. The 20th anniversary of the wall falling. It was rainy and miserable out, no way was I going out anywhere to hold hands with strangers. I know, I'm no team player. Instead a bunch of us Finns sat in our apartment and watched it all happen on tv. Drinking sparkling wine and eating quiche. I have to say, it could not have been a nicer evening – and we had a great view of the Brandenburger Tor event on the small screen. I bet the only thing we would have seen there in person were the insides of hundreds of umbrellas.

Tomorrow I get my better half back from Dublin again, and after a few nights of rest, we will take the train to Warsaw. I am very excited about that, I have not been there before. I wonder if you get any veggie food there? :)

Free dinner

I don't know about free lunches, but in Berlin there IS such a thing as free dinners! Our friend, who lives in Neukölln, invited us to her local for free food yesterday. B-Lage serves one meal a week for a mere "spende", aka donation, to it's customers every Wednesday. We were a little suspicious, us being vegetarians and also not knowing many nice places in Neukölln. This bar certainly is as cosy and hip as any place in Prenzlauer Berg. DJ's play electronic music, the walls have cute spray-art and it has that cool run-down look. We arrived something to eight and after that the place started to slowly get crowded. Food was served around 8.30pm, and by then the bar was full and the queue for food circled room. The dish of the day was "curryous"; mash with a grain in it, maybe rice, accompanied by a delicious Indian-style spicy spinach sauce with pineapple. The food is always vegetarian, and this week vegan as well. Still, maybe the best part of the night was that all of us who gathered are learning German, and so we spoke German the whole night!

First snow

It's snowing in Berlin! It looks really strange and since it's too early and too warm for real snow, it is extremely wet outside. We came home from school looking like we had just taken a shower :) We still have to venture to the post office to send out our Father's Day cards, which we should have done yesterday...

View from our window today

Tonight we are invited to join a few class mates in a bar in Neukölln that serves free food. Very exciting to see what that's like! Our friends go every week, so it can't be too bad... I'll take notes and pass on the wisdom.

When the wall came down

Everybody keeps talking about the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down – and I don't have any particular plans. What to do? I am invited to a birthday brunch on Saturday, and the hostess promised we could then also commemorate the wall falling :) I still do feel like I should be Participating more. I belong to a group on Facebook that aims to make a wall of people hand-in-hand, recreating the wall. Someone else will try to recreate the wall using Domino blocks. Apparently there will also be a gig with 200 guitar players at once at the East Side Gallery. I have been trying to research this, but am no more decided on what to do when I started... Here's some links, anyway:

Free stuff to do in Berlin next weekend
Official website of the Mauerfall
Semi official website
Concert at Brandenburger Tor

Halloween – all year round!

I think I have written about Zyankali before. It's a tiny little cellar bar in Kreuzberg and we got accidentally very, very drunk there once, forgetting that the tasty house brew, Zyankalibräu, is 8,5% strong... We were there on Halloween and had a great time – the owner even played us some Finnish music :D But the thing is, the bar looks the same all year long; like the set for a horror film. There are skeletons and skulls everywhere, it's dark and gloomy and even our table was a coffin with a glass lid, so we could see the "mummified body" in it – can you see it in the photo? Very cool. Not to every ones taste, I can imagine.

Last days of autumn

I can't stop looking at all the amazing colours that have been everywhere these past weeks! I have a special fascination with the vines, climbing on all all the buildings in pretty patterns an shades. It makes me sad that the weather is getting colder and all the colours will slowly float to the pavement. Maybe winter will be pretty, too?