Berlin - poor but sexy

                                    

As you know, I live and study in Berlin for a while now. Since it´s roundabout one-year anniversay I thought I´d blog about living here for a change.

People say, Berlin is not like the rest of Germany. It´s a melting pot of cultures, where food is cheap and nights are long.

They say it´s one of the best party places in Europe (no curfew, parties going on from Friday night to Monday morning nonstop, Berghain, Kater Holzig, more or less 600 bars and concept stores etc. etc., what more do I have to say?).

        

Which is totally true. But it´s way more than that: its millions of different facettes allow each and every person to find their place, no matter how crazy your hobby is, you´ll find others who´ll happily do it with you. Whether you´re an enthusiastic rainforestfrog collector or a tattoo fetish person or god knows what else, you name it, it´s there and I promise, there´s a regular meeting or whatever.

This city is not only striving for creativity, it lives it to the fullest.

And with this, it gives you the best present one can ever receive: freedom.

You´re free to go out, explore yourself, enjoy life, do whatever you want. 

 

I love the little market at Maybachufer with all the cheap fruit and veggies and turkish specialties, I love the Flohmärkte on the weekends where you spend hours browsing around not sure whether to find this gray pleated skirt cool (or just plain old and ugly) and then happily lounging on the grass area next to it eating sheep cheese and salad wraps.

I love strolling around old factory buildings, then go skinny-dipping in the river next to it and lying in the warm sun afterwards not caring whether someone might find you or not.

Here, you can expect the unexpected. You might wake up to a seemingly normal day and find yourself in a video shoot a couple of hours later. Or in a film premiere, or face to face with someone extremely rich and well-known (but then you can´t remember his name for the heck of it but you could swear you´ve SEEN this face before, wasn´t he in this one movie...?).

In summer, I like to sit next to the canal with my friends, drinking beers and chatting about this and that. 

Now, that it´s cold, I do pretty much the same thing only inside and with Glühwein. 

In the mornings, I watch the guy from the Schnäppchencenter with the shop sign that includes at least three grammatical mistakes putting up the same bags in front of the store every morning, day after day- always balancing on his shelves rather than getting a chair from inside.

He is the very same guy who sat outside his shop smoking shisha with friends watching the german football game a few month earlier when the europe cup was on.

In the beginning I found it overwhelming, and it´s hard to get a foot in the door. But then, step after step, you unravel yet another little secret, another hidden spot, another cute little obscurity, and slowly but inevitably, you fall in love with it, with Berlin, the one and only.

Das einzige, was wir nicht könnten, ist Flughafen.