OK! The Sun is back. It is still cold, of course, and nobody will go to the hospital due to a sunstroke… but the sun is here and we all hope it plans to stay.
As a Spanish speaking person it is always funny to observe that „the Sun“ (die Sonne) is a feminine noun in German and „the moon“ (der Mond) is a masculine noun, it is quite the opposite in Spanish. But I guess the Moon and the Sun have no gender (until proven otherwise…)
Perhaps the S-Bahn was faster, more punctual and more reliable some months ago (that’s what the locals say to everyone who wants to hear it!) but I am still amazed by how accurate the official webpage is:
www.bvg.de
It tells you when, how and almost why you can go from one place to another.
Use it and love it, but hate the S-bahn budget cuts as a local!
Someone stenciled this cycle signal by Nollendorfplatz. The heart, star, and slime droplet threw me off at first, but I focused on the Helvetica bike and regained my bearings.
This led me to consider the fact that in Germany the yellow light is used ahead of the green light to say, “you’re up!”. The red light—when it comes to walk/don’t walk–changes all of a sudden, without warning. A pedestrian’s only hope for survival rests in the revving engines of oncoming traffic: that is the sound of a yellow light.
I know this is kind of childish but I really want a sledge. Seeing all this kids being dragged by their parents all around Berlin makes me really jealous. I guess that if I get one, I’ll end up in the intensive care unit of a random hospital in Poland due to a bureaucratic mistake but, what is a broken leg and massive physical trauma compared with the joy of having a sledge?
Children of Berlin, take care of your sledges. They are way too tempting!
Are you wondering why do you spend so much time when searching for an address in Berlin? In case you did not notice, the street numbering system in Berlin is quite confusing, as the system the rest of the world uses (odd numbers are on one side and even numbers on the other side of the street) is not valued very highly here and some streets are numbered consecutively up one side of the street and back down the other.
That explains those hordes of tourists staring at their maps and saying: „it… it should be here!“, doesn’t it?
Before the good weather finally arrives, you should go and see the Snowmen demonstration in Schlossplatz (in front of the Berliner Dom)
Eviromentalists and sympathizers have created this massive demonstration of snowmen that warns us about the consequences of global warming.
Schönes Wochenende!
The people of Germany have really good ideas sometimes like giving you part of your money back if you recycle bottles, bicycle lanes everywhere and Biergärten. Some of their ideas are just not so cool, such as holidays in Benidorm, really counting some bread with butter + any random ingredient as a real meal and the declination of the adjective. I mean, they do it that way so no foreigner can say any sentence that does not contain at least three mistakes, don’t they?
Choose a word. Choose an adjective to describe that word. Choose an ending for the adjective. By the way, never mind thinking too hard, as 90% of the time whatever you chose will be the wrong ending. My solution of never using adjectives is not very useful if you want to communicate with other human beings, so we are doomed to study the declination of the adjective again and again so our frustration grows like hell. Still, everybody will understand our free style use of the adjective, so talk with any stranger as if there were no dative…
Tough times have hit the Ku’ Damm. Poor old Luxury is always the first casualty of a bad economy.
Half the Damm’s sidewalk jewel boxes–devised to bring you within a few glass inches of Baccarat and Gucci-things–are plastered over with glowing ads for tourist spaghetti troughs. Now it seems this old gentleman’s mainstay, More for Less, has decided to take matters into its own hands, in the Jack Torrance sense. The rather desperate looking sign reads “WE’RE SHOOTING…”.
Granted there is just one L between Schiessen and Schliessen, which means “closing”. That’s probably what they meant. Feeling lucky?
Hi! My name is Ana and I began my German course today. I would like to write in German, but I’m lacking confidence to do so right now. I hope I will be able to write my entries in German by the end of this course, though.
If anybody is reading this before coming to Berlin I would like to suggest them that they should pack as many sweaters as their suitcases can possibly hold. Believe me: you are probably coming from a warmer country, unless you are coming from Siberia. Streets are icy and slippery, but the city is worth several embarrassing falls, that’s a fact!
On Berlin’s biannual Long Nights of the Museum (Lange Nacht der Museen), nearly all of the city’s many museums stay open until 2:00 am. A single ticket buys universal admission as well as unlimited public transportation for the night. The winter event was held the weekend before last–as it happened, by the light of the year’s brightest biggest moon.
My girlfriend and I went to the Museum für Naturkunde. It was the night’s only stop thanks to a late start, but I have absolutely no regrets. The Museum für Naturkunde is charming and old-school. In contrast to so many technologically overwrought, super child-friendly museums one sees these days, the Museum für Naturkunde’s shabby treasures speak for themselves.
It was the perfect museum to see by night. The crowds were out in full force, sipping pink cocktails under the world’s largest fossil brachiosaur–but in the moments we were alone, the old museum by night felt forbidden and magical.
Check out amazingly cute dead animals like these at the Museum für Naturkunde by day, or wait for the summer event on August 28, 2010.