East Berlin Blues

My time in Berlin has been as eventful as ever. Coming here on the pretence of earning a living by headhunting, my dreams were quashed on the first day of work. Trust companies not to give you a decent salary, let alone a work permit but I will get to the misgivings of the work permit later. So, on paper the company I worked for is the 'number one hiring agency in all of Europe'. Until I typed the same sentence in Google, I actually believed that load of lard before I started playing house in Prenzlauer Berg, at a big apartment I happened to rent for a month. While things seemed bleak in general, some waste of life out there stole the bike I was given. Come end of Feb, I had to move once again; not before I had to 'compensate' my landlady for the bike. Moving stuff to nearby Schonhauser Allee was convenient but, the apartment was not. I know what your thinking; Why did you move to a place you didnt like?? The apartment is a 'Wohnung-Zimmer' (your not the only one in the house) owned by a cretinaceous, insane, megalomaniac called Michaela Ristau. The complex dichotomy of her existence really astounds me; She barely eats anything all day, doesnt do anything purposeful in life, and is generally lackadaisical as all hell. Yet, she says she works as a acupuncturist to most outsiders, feeds her dog (Bastard Bertie is a Rotweiler) beside the pots and pans in the house (Yech!) and bitches about everybody else in the house. Far from this depressing hell-hole in which I have been trying to formulate my existence, I have met many interesting people from far and wide that makes up for just about everything else. Just about. Finding people to play cricket with in Berlin definitely takes the cake. An avid fan of good beats, Berlin tingles every little hair down my back and keeps those goosebumps up all night with its voracious mix of Techno, Drum n Bass, Trance, House and Minimalist Belters. The only club that has caught my eye uptil now is the Watergate, by the Oberbaumbruecke in Warschauer Strasse but I have heard that Panorama is even better. Wednesday nights at the Boat party close by are good for the mid-week crisis tension to dissipate; time to chill with good friends over a beer or two. Lager and the FiFa World Cup 2006 brought me to Deutschland more than 3 years back and now I seem to be at a very interesting, reflective inflection point in my life, but time waits for no one eh? I take solace in the fact that my good friend Dimitris found a great place to stay in Mitte, a studio apartment with the works. Ok, off to look for another interesting job to get me all the moolah I need as a young blood in Berlin.