Furnishing for free

We had a few cool days that let us breathe easy and get some proper sleep: now the thermometre is slowly creeping towards +30°C again.

Yesterday we really appreciated the cooler +22 when we picked up random furniture, bits and pieces around Berlin. A was very excited to collect a pile of free, redundant chipboards from Neukölln, advertised on Craigslist. Then we steered our rental van towards the west and picked up our three-euro eBay sofa. We felt so bad for how low the price was, we paid five instead. But turns out that if a sofa costs tree euro, it's not going to be in very good condition, surprisingly enough. So now we're spending the day trying to clean it. (We also found the eBay Kleinanzeigen page useful; it's regular for-sale-ads, no bidding involved.) Then we headed north, to Wedding, to empty out Mr Diego's room from the stuff he posted on Freecycle. We had to leave a desk there, that we simply could not squeeze into the van anymore. His bed was quite new and that was the only thing he had to buy himself, so we offered him whatever cash we had on us for it: 10 euro :)

So for €15 (+rental van €29) we got two sofas, a mattress, a futon base, a wardrobe, a bedside table with drawers and a pile of chipboard. Not bad for a days work. And 'yay!' to everyone who's recycling!

Too hot

It's 1 am and it's still +25°C outside, insane! It's too hot to go to bed. Unfortunately painters and landlords are coming early tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow is luckily a cool +27, so maybe we can sleep tomorrow night :)

Out of the old, into the new

We left our old, 47 m2, furnished apartment in Prenzlauer Berg nice and clean. We were not tired or very stressed at all: we got an amazing parking spot, had plenty of time and not much to do, it felt like. We picked up a Freecycled fridge from M&M and had a Radler before we went to meet the previous tenant, who would give us the keys to our new home.


When we arrived at the new, 57 m2, empty apartment in F'hain, it was almost three o'clock before we could start unpacking. The van needed to be returned at four. There were only the two of us carrying stuff. Did I say it was +27°C? We ran back and forth between the car and our hallway, where we threw our boxes and knickknacks. My mom rang, she was on her way from the airport. Everything at once, of course! It all went well in the end, and we got to have some moving beers and dinner at our downstairs restaurant. We were also happily surprised that the Robben & Wientjes van only cost us €32 for seven hours (you have to have an EU driver's licence and be registered in Berlin to rent there). The apartment is still a mess, because we are waiting for painters to come and paint over the interesting colour choices the previous tenants had made... Except the yellow hallway and living room. We also have no furniture and nowhere to unpack stuff into :) But I'm very excited about our new home, it will eventually become a very good one.

Procrastinating doesn't pay

It's almost 2am and we are still packing "just our clothes". Then we will have to "just hoover a little" before we're done. And tomorrow we pick up our Robben&Wientjes van at 10, then carry everything down from the fourth floor. The temperature will be at sweet +27°C. I can't wait until the day after tomorrow!

Begging for boxes

Today we decided to finish most of our packing, but didn't have enough boxes. Already yesterday we went to a few shops in the area to see if we could get empty cardboard boxes, without luck. Today it felt like we were asking people for money: we stood outside the shops and bickered about who will have to go in and ask. "No, sorry, we don't have any" or "We just recycled all of ours yesterday". It took us about an hour to come up with three empty boxes. Now we can finish packing most of the rest; tomorrow is cleaning day and on Thursday we move. And my mom comes.

Karma

We had a really nice bye-to-P'berg barbecue in Mauerpark last night. We were around 10 people, ate veggie-skewers, halloumi sandwiches, cakes and strawberries hand-picked by S.


After some left over Schrippen for lunch this afternoon, we headed to Mauerpark to find cutlery for our new home. We pretty much only own clothes, some books, our bikes and our laptops. We were in a hurry to see the Germany-England football game and by the time we had left the house, queued at the worlds slowest Berliner Bank cash machine, S and D were already at the kneipe fending for a table, so we skipped the Flohmarkt. After the game (Germany won 4-1) we picked up the broken, crazy-pink bike that our Spanish friend S is semi-permanently lending us. A promised to fix it so that my mom will have a bike to zoom around on when she's here. On the last stretch home, cycling with three bikes, we found a pile of "zum verschenken" (give-away) stuff, with basically everything we wanted to find in Mauerpark today! Cutlery, a mirror, a big floor-pillow and a coat hanger. Pretty good karma, huh?

(We immidiately paid back by helping a guy who lost his keys outside our door. There is a hole in our doorstep, covered with metal bars, that looks into the cellar of the building. I've lost my keys there once, and we figured out that our cellar key works to that cellar, too.)

Midsummer

Today is midsummer's eve. After work and dinner we went for to Caramello for organic ice creams and then to Kaiser's to prepare for tomorrow's barbecue. It wasn't meant to be a Midsummer BBQ, rather a goodbye-to-Prenzlauer Berg picnic... We invited pretty much every one we know in Berlin via Facebook – and about half of them can make it. It should be fun. We bought tree disposable grills (very un-ecological, I know...), halloumi, courgettes, bell peppers and corn on the cob, and I'll make chili-chocolate cupcakes tonight. The weather forecast could be better so we'd get a really warm night; right now it's predicting +23°C.