Germany is the Land of Ideas. Spain is The Land of Sun and Thailand, the Land of Smile. Most countries have a brand of their own, something that can shortly define what that country is all about. Some countries talk about their business opportunities, some are proud of their welcoming and generous people, some present themselves as creative, other speak about their history and traditions. There is a special something for each one of them.

As I came to Berlin I kept on asking myself – what is that word able to express the essence of the city? Or what is the word people would mostly associate Berlin with? So I asked a few friends of mine and the answers were really interesting, that’s why I thought about sharing this with you.

A boy told me that “The Wall” will always make him think of Berlin. Why not the Pink Floyd album? I said. My best friend spontaneously associates Berlin with bicycles because in here people ride their bikes everywhere. No matter you go to school, to work, you go shopping or simply enjoy a ride with kids, the bicycle is indeed a noticeable presence in the city.

Other friends define Berlin as the city that never sleeps. There are so many events, so many parties and such an active cultural life that sleeping can definitely wait.

The Alexanderplatz tower is another key image of Berlin. To me it looks like a huge German host inviting people to Mitte.  No matter where you come from, as long as you see the tower, you know you didn’t get lost.

Someone else told me that the first word that comes to his mind is Graffiti. I found this quite interesting, because graffiti is indeed a form of local art present from Tacheles to U-bahn stations.

For the moment I feel they are all right. But I still need to explore the city more by myself. What about you? What is the word that best defines your Berlin?

P.S Hope not this one :)

Don’t know how you are, but when it comes to going out, I cannot say no. I just cannot say no. They don’t call me Duracell for nothing!  And, as I’m new to Berlin, I love doing new things, discovering new places and attending all sort of events. But, what I love even more, is attending these events for free.

So, just in case you like tips, like I do, here comes one!

Imagine it’s Wednesday and you’re in the mood for some live jazz, a glass of cold beer or a hot cup of tea. Then you should just take your jacket and go to B-Flat, a small bar located in Mitte, on 13 Rosenthaler Strasse. It’s true, they have great jazz every weekday, but on Wednesdays you can enter free of charge!

Here, more or less famous performers come and improvise. Most of them know each other, just like in a family, but some play there for the first time, so the sound is always fresh and exciting. The saxophones, the cello, the piano, the flute and the drums create a perfect fusion and a perfect atmosphere.  It’s really fun! I’ve been there for the first time for a birthday party! It was crowded but, somehow, cozy. I remember one of the performers dedicated a song to our friend that was just turning 25.

Last night a 10 or 12 year old boy played the piano in a fantastic manner. Even the other performers from the stage, some of them about 60 years old, were amazed by the talent of the little boy. His parents, sitting at a corner  table, were overwhelmed with enthusiasm. You could read the pride in their eyes.

If you really want to enjoy the music, you should be there around 8.30pm. Starting 9pm you may not find a place to sit, because it’s getting really crowded. But even so, the music is great and the people very nice.

Details here: http://www.b-flat-berlin.de/

I kept on hearing about how great Sundays in Mauer Park are. All my friends go and have fun there every weekend, but, for different reasons, I only managed to get there last Sunday. It was a beautiful day and it would have been a shame not to go.

First we entered the world of “Everything you might or might not need”. If you were there in a Sunday you know what I’m talking about. It’s this big fair where you find everything from buttons to old cameras and gas masks. You can really get lost among all that stuff. That’s why, after a short while, we decided to get out.

But, as we were leaving the fair, I saw a wall singing – a wall of people sitting on the stone steps of what it seemed to be an amphitheatre that were encouraging a little girl to finish her karaoke song.  It was so nice to see that shy but brave 6 year old standing in front of all those people and singing. When she finished the wall of people applaud with enthusiasm.

Then my friend told me that here people come every Sunday for karaoke and the atmosphere is always very good. And so it seemed because everyone was enjoying the moment! We wanted to join them, but there were no more places left, so we decided to watch a little from the opposite side.

After few more minutes a new performer came up on stage. We all recognized the song from the very beginning – it was Whitney Houston’s song I will always love you from the soundtrack of the Bodyguard movie. Not the kind of song you would listen at home, I assume, but in there it was fun to watch.  People started singing next to the woman on stage, while waving hands. It was a full of live and colored wall singing a love song. It was pretty impressive.

That’s when I though, hmm… maybe the Berlin Wall is not the only reason why they call this place Mauer Park (The Wall Park)! I really recommend you do go there in a Sunday. It’s free, it’s fun and there are so many things happening that you’ll surely find something suitable for you.

Have you ever heard about blind booking? Let’s say, for example, that you and two more friends of yours want to take a trip somewhere for about…3 days. You don’t know exactly where to go and definitely you are not in the mood of spending too much. You want a cheap trip and lots of fun.

One thing you could try is to blind book your trip. What does it mean? Go the webpage of a flight company that offers this kind of service (I know German Wings does) and see what destinations you could reach from your departure city. For example now, from Berlin, you can blind book a flight to Bucharest, Stuttgart, Munich, Cologne, Stockholm or Zagreb. Then choose the flight dates and the number of persons and turn your destination into a lottery, letting the system decide where to go.

If you really don’t want to get Cologne, for example, then you can exclude it from the list, but that would cost you a small extra-fee. You can exclude up to three destinations from the list and so the chances to get to one of your favorite cities are higher.

This kind of booking can be great if you’re looking for something different, no matter what. It’s a bit of fun and a bit of adventure at really affordable prices. If you’re lucky you can get a 25-30 euro round ticket to destinations like London, Barcelona, Roma or Lisbon, all taxes and fees included.

I didn’t blind book a trip until now, because Romanian companies don’t have this option, but now, that I’m in Berlin, I think I would give it a try to see what happens. Anyone else interested?

It was my first Friday in Berlin and I was planning to watch a movie with some friends. As I was new in town, a friend suggested me to watch a movie about Berlin, something to introduce me to the urban Berlin lifestyle. And, as our first B1.2 lesson in Deutsch Akademie was about movies, I thought it would be nice to share this with you.

The movie I want to talk to you about is a comedy released in 2006 and called Schwarze Schafe/Black Sheep. It is a collection of both strange and funny stories whose characters are more or less normal people living more or less normal lives.

First, we meet an Ex Handmodel for Rolex who pretends to get sick in the restaurant of a posh hotel in order to get the most expensive room and seduce the blond gorgeous marketing manager invited for dinner. We also meet two Satanists (one of them wearing a Kelly Family T-shirt haha) that plan to bring Satan’s kingdom back on Earth by performing a weird ritual in which a pig mask and a grandmother in coma are involved. An East-German woman and her drunken boyfriend meet a former schoolmate, now married with a rich man from München, and make a real show on a tourist boat. The Berlin couple ends up in the river, a good pretext to present in a subtle way the mentality differences between Berlin and München.  And, of course, I should not forget the three Turkish boys that try to find some women, but eventually all they find is trouble.

The movie is in German and, at that point, I could only enjoy the English subtitles. But the German friends say the slang language in the movie is totally delicious. Whether you understand German or not, the movie is really fun to see. Especially on a Friday night, with friends.

Abia am implinit o luna de cand sunt in Berlin si descopar aproape zilnic lucruri noi. Lucruri care imi plac. Prietena mea, mutata de 5 ani aici, imi spune ca asta e darul acestui oras – de a se reinventa.

Nu stiu voi de cat timp locuiti aici si ce anume v-a incantat pana acum, dar pe mine anticariatul ambulant din fata Universitatii Humbold ma fascineaza ori de cate ori trec pe acolo. Pur si simplu nu pot trece indiferenta fara sa-mi bag nasul in cutiile alea de carton, adevarate comori cu povesti. Miroase a carti, a albume de arta, a discuri vechi. Nu din astea noi, in culori stridente cu titluri argintii. Nu! Miroase a coperta usor decolorata sau cartonata, dupa caz. Nu-mi pot refuza impulsul de a arunca macar o privire.

Asa imi spun, doar o privire. Care apoi ocheste cateva titluri cunoscute, apoi aluneca pe cotoarele unor alte carti, pe numele altor autori, pana cand, nereusind sa rezist curiozitatii, incep sa dau paginile una cate una. Intai un Nietzsche, apoi un Edgar Allan Poe. Apoi un Orhan Pamuk. Cateva carti despre istoria Berlinului, un Phillip Roth, un album despre Picasso si unul cu arta in perioada renasterii. O carte de retete tailandeze si Micul Print. Nu ma pot abtine. Sunt prea multe si prea bune. Sunt carti care au facut istorie si care se vand in fata la Humbold ca rosiile la supermarket – doua la 3 euro.

Din cartile scrise in engleza citesc cate un paragraf. Din cele scrise in germana, insa, inteleg doar cateva cuvinte, dar visez sa ajung sa citesc Herta Muller si Elfriede Jelinek in limba care le-a consacrat.

Prietena mea imi traduce un aliniat dintr-o carte. Auzind, vanzatorul incepe sa-l injure pe Berlusconi, un fascist! “Nu, nu suntem italience, vorbim limba romana”, radem noi. Vanzatorul, un personaj pitoresc cu plete si o caciula de blana pe cap, se mai tempereaza, ba chiar il umfla rasul. Noi luam alte carti la rasfoit. La fel si ceilalti din jurul nostru, atrasi magnetic de muntele de hartie imprimata cu povesti .

Rar pot pleca fara sa cumper ceva. Pentru ca e prea frumos. Si, daca mai e si o zi insorita, in care frigul nu da ghes, cutiile de carton parca ma prind de haina si ma tin acolo.

The first week at Deutsch Akademie is finished. Not just anyhow, but with pantomime! This was one of the Friday exercises that made us all laugh.

I had to be a doctor and a hairdresser. For a second, the colleague next to me was really confused noticing I started touching his hair. Tomoko, my Japanese colleague was a dentist, Alexandra from Macedonia was a supermarket and Piotr from Poland was…the television tower from Alexanderplatz!

We’ve played more games and played tricks to each other, while leaning new words and repeating grammar in the same time.  During those games, I suddenly realized something funny – we are so different, but, somehow, so similar.

No matter where we come from (Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Macedonia, Romania, Korea, Japan) no matter some are engineers and some bartenders, some like modern dance, some football or chocolate croissants, life brought us all in Berlin and, at this point, for all of us learning German is a priority. We were all listening to the same Marlene Dietrich song, took the same notes from the blackboard and prepared the same homework. I left my thoughts behind and joined the game again, because my colleague was acting out something new.

This colorful mix of people around makes learning German so entertaining! Because yes, entertaining it’s exactly how the whole first week was. Looking forward for the second!

Don’t know how many of you come from ex-communist countries and, even if you do, don’t know if you were not too young to remember how it was.

But, if you’re interested in this subject and in good literature I warmly recommend you a great German author born in Romania (just like me, but a billion times more talented) and awarded with the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature – Herta Müller.

Her books picture the atmosphere of those times, focusing on everyday life. The stories are mostly narrated from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania. Whether the action happens in a small provincial town (Even back then, the fox was the hunter) or in a concentration camp (Everything I own I carry with me), she presents those everyday little things able to drive you crazy. Because it’s not the shocking events that shock, but the incredible nothingness present everywhere.

The novels have no intense action, but every chapter adds one more piece to the final puzzle of the grey communist feeling. Because, if I would have to give a color to her stories, that would definitely be gray – not the happy bright white, nor the black of terror – just a grey floating heavily in the air. The air that her characters breath until they become grey too.

Indeed, her novels are a bit depressive, but only because, as she said in an interview, she wrote what she saw. And, considering the fact she received death threats for refusing to become an informant for the Securitate (President Nicolae Ceausescu’s department of state security) and her mother was deported to the Soviet Gulag for forced labor, she has good reasons to picture those times in grey.

Don’t know if I made you curious about her novels, but you should try. They are definitely not Sunday books.

Nu stiu altii cum sunt, dar eu, cand ma gandesc la locul nasterii mele, care, ca sa evitam confuziile, nu e Humulesti, imi amintesc ca, deseori, desi era frig de-ti ingheta inima in piept, era totusi soare. Si numai la gandul ca e soare, frigul devenea patetic.

Nu intentionez sa scriu un post inutil despre vreme si nici o cariera de meteorolog nu vreau, dar nu inteleg…cum se descurca oamenii din Berlin saptamani in sir fara soare pe cer? Fara lumina? Doar cu ploaie marunta “made in reumatism” si cu un cer de culoarea gulerului murdar.

Da, stiu ca soarele e undeva acolo in spatiu si ca ne vegheaza de dincolo de nori, dar mie, personal, daca nu mi se arata clar, pe fata, mi se infunda toate corabiile. Iata de ce, de cateva zile, corabiile mele sunt sub un strat adanc de mal si nu reusesc sa fac nimic constructiv.

Ba ieri, culmea penibilului, conducandu-mi o prietena la aeroport, tresar pret de o secunda vazand o raza de lumina proiectata pe fereastra trenului. Dintr-o data durerea de cap ma lasa si inceput sa rad in sinea mea de gandurile negre si pacatoase care-mi invadau capul.

Si, ca momentul penibil sa fie desavarsit, constat in milisecunda urmatoare, ca asa zisa raza de soare nu era altceva decat lumina neonului din interiorul trenului, reflectata pe geam.  Inutil sa mentionez ca durerea de cap a revenit si nu m-a lasat pana la Pankow, desi raza m-a condus constiincios tot drumul, neabatandu-se niciun milimetru.

Ei, in astfel de momente abia astept sa vina seara. Macar atunci nu e soare pentru ca asa e in firea lucrurilor. Si, desi la inceput imi parea cumva rau ca fac modulul de seara la Deutsch Akademie, acum mi se pare super pentru ca zau daca nu seara e cea mai fresh parte a zilei!