Nico leaves Williams

Nico has officially declared that 2009 is his last season with Williams.
Firstly, I win that bet. I knew he would leave.
Secondly, what are the odds? Is he replacing Kovaleinen at McLaren or Barrichello at Brawn next year? Who wants to play? Paul, dare I say you and I might be on the same team next year?!
I'd prefer him to go to Brawn honestly. I'm quite certain that the McLarens will be back on pace IN A BIG WAY next year, but I my reasons for wanting Nico to race for Brawn are 3 fold:
1) I don't want to be a McLaren supporter. Really. It will pain me.
2) Barrichello needs to get his ass out of a race car and into some random commentary box a la DC. I am so over that small Brazilian.
3) I'm just not sure Nico can pull off the orangetastic garb those McLaren boys wear. I love me some Brawn.

Realistically, as it stands, I can see the following happening:
Nico takes Heikki's place at McLaren
Heidfeld takes Nico's place at Williams
And new boy on the block Bruno Senna gets his first F1 drive for Brawn. He tested for them last year. They can't possibly let another F1 season go by without getting that kid in a car.
Having said all that, my hope is still for a Button/Rosberg Brawn team. Can you imagine? I am hyperventilating just thinking about it.

Mother of the Blueness

I’ve been eating speck and barley soup and drinking wine. I am bringing wine back. My body feels like the wasteland where complex carbohydrates have come to die. It’s all I can think to do. It’s winter and I want wine and soup. You can buy beautiful soup green bundles here. At Winterfeldt Markt in West Berlin they sell them all bundled up for a single Euro; two carrots, a leek, a few baby parsnips and a chunk of celeriac wrapped in twine. (Shelley would love them) A bit of speck (when in doubt, add smoked pork product to everything) and a handful of barley and you’ve got yourself a postcard worthy winter in a cup. Something about the soup makes me think of Glamorgan Road and for a few moments I am sitting at the table next to Craig eating soup out of those blue bowls with bread slathered in thick, cold butter, Matthew and Robin mercilessly making fun of us. I love winter food. Its richness, the comfort of it. How it tastes like nourishment.

Though it is technically fall, the ankle deep autumnal mulch underfoot a testament to the fact, I am already in winter mode. It’s a season for hats and scarves and popping the collar of your jacket up to shield you from the biting wind. It’s weather that makes me long for the rabbit fur snood Magpie and I are currently co-coveting. I love the smell of winter. Every time I leave my apartment I am assailed with the warm scent of firewood flooding the courtyard. It smells like trout fishing weekends and fireplaces so big you can sit inside them and nod off against the warm stone walls and card games and copper tables and glasses big as bell jars. I love the way the winter mist makes a haze of the wide streets and fogs up the headlights of the cars and make ladders of their beams. And tucking your hands into the sleeves of your jersey and sitting outside cafes with blankets over your knees, drinking hot black coffee, your breath blowing silver from your mouth.

Still, winter girl though I am, I can’t help but succumb to the mother of the blueness some days. (This by no means is something true for only winter. But I digress....) Today I went walking to try and shake it off and clear the cobwebs in my sleepy, sullen head. But I only ended up being followed half way around Prenzlauerberg by a creepy man in some sort of industrial waste cleaning uniform, who kept trying to get me go into large, wooded areas with him. After fifteen or so tense minutes, I tucked the blond bit of my hair into my bowler hat, pulled the old Rope a Dope and faked right when I in fact went left and ducked into the courtyard of a pretty church. Satisfied I’d lost the creep and happy to see there was a small organic market set up on the other side of the church, I spent some time wandering through the carts, admiring the stalls selling 12 types of apples, 54 kinds of meat. Though starving, I didn’t buy anything. I couldn’t face it to treat myself, thinking of my poor book left unloved most of last week. Terrible writer. I smack myself on both wrists and stare sullenly at the cold, unimpressed smirk of my blank notebook. It is not buying my “But I had visitors” excuse, and like a scorned lover, turns away from me and edges to the other side of the bed.
Later, I rode the U-bahn with no real destination in mind, listening to The National until my i-pod battery ran out, the unmistakable rough tongue of miserablism licking my neck. By the time I got home it was dark and cold. And I walked into my apartment and found it warm and smelling of European indoor heating. (a ridiculous sounding, but completely true phenomena. No other central heating smells quite like ours.)

I can’t help but notice that my time here is dwindling to weeks and soon those weeks will become days and then I will gone from the wide roads and the late night Turkish beer stores and the taste of winter on my tongue and soup greens wrapped in bundles and red paved cycle paths and smell of firewood in the morning...

Disclaimer: This is a reenactment

MzTanya goes hobo outside the Gay Vampire Bar. Shockingly, this is not from Friday night. No, this was on the (comparitively) sober Saturday night, when we thought it would be a scream to capture what could have been/almost was. Taking this photo without the bar staff seeing us was challenging. I am behind the lens. Hiding behind a car.

Friday was a MESS.

It started innocently enough. Tanya and I got up earlyish and went Second Hand Store crazy. First, we went to the five story monster Humana near Frankfurter Tor (spiritual home of the brightly coloured 80s leather jacket) and then the smaller, somewhat cheaper and less hilarious store near Alexander Platz. After we tore through Humana at lightning speed (purchases: Tanya: amazing tiny, fitted denim jacket with stretch cuffs and a double zip, black scarf, rock rock forever t-shirt, child sized zebra costume for Halloween. Eloise: double strand of buttery cream coloured pearls, ornate jewelled clasp. ridiculously underpriced.) we needed to stop by the bank so that Tanya might exchange some cash. As we walked into the bank, we spied an odd sight. The front counter, which would usually serve as an information point, was decked out for a party. There were bowls of sweets, leaflets, goodie bags of some sort etc etc. I looked closer. There were glasses. There were ROWS AND ROWS OF GLASSES. THERE ARE BOTTLES. The smiling woman behind the counter was handing out red canvas bags with the bank’s name on them. As I took a bag, I studied the scene more closely and it dawned on me that we have stumbled into what I can only describe as the Holy Grail of the finance calendar: Free Champagne Day at the Bank. It is about 2pm. Between queuing up to exchange money (wechseln, bitte!), loitering a tiny bit and pocketing the leaflets, sweets and balloons that had yet to be blown up, we managed to polish off three glasses of champagne. Each. We were in there for 20 minutes at the most. The glasses were not tiny. We had not eaten. Do you see where I am going with this?

We proceed to The Ramones Museum in Mitte where we were due to meet Nat and Sarah. The museum has a cute little cafe at the front of it and since neither Tanya or I are desperate to see the actual inside of the museum we decide it best to continue what we started. We order Irish coffees (It was COLD out) and sit back and wait for the girls to arrive. We are starving. But the whiskey lashed coffee is hitting the spot. The girls are nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half passes before they arrive. By this point, Tanya and I have settled happily into our drinking boots and the warmth of the interior of the cafe coupled with the comfort of the couches has resulted in afternoon inebriation. Everything is hilarious. We are starving.

After Nat gets her Ramones fill (the only of the four of us with sufficient love and dedication to the iconic punk band to willingly part with her money to enter the little museum) we head home, stopping at a supermarket on the way home to pick up some bits and pieces for dinner and some wine. Becuase this is what we need. Wine. We hang out and talk shit and drink and finally get some food into ourselves. As the night draws on, Tanya, Sarah and I decide to go to a bar. Because that is what we need. To drink more. (Nat is a clever girl and stays home to have a little sleep. This was to be the beginning of a vicious 48hr bug that flattened her for two days, but more about that another time.) We go to Habarmeyer on Garntnerstrasse (home of the DJ BEAST who had been playing there the Friday before.) Alas. DJ Beast is not there and neither is the incredible selection of music he plays. Still, we stay. A less beastly DJ arrives and plays and the music is good and beer is cheap and the people are nice to look at and you can smoke inside, so we stay. We stay a while. Eventually Sarah, having just landed that morning, calls it a day and heads home to bed. Tanya and I do no such thing. We continue. We tell hilarious stories until we cry. We tell sad stories until we almost cry. We drink some more. We realise that I do a pitch perfect Bronx accent and I spend the rest of the evening talking as though as I care/know anything about the Yankees and live somewhere above East 132nd Street. Eventually, we leave. On the way home, we stop for drunken falafel. This naturally comes with a side order of beer. As we are finishing said falafel, Tanya says, “I could really do with a whiskey.”
When you are drunk and really don’t need anything more to drink, a night cap before going back to your apartment seems like the best idea on god's green earth. So we stumble up the road. We are plastered. We are doing that thing that girls do when they are hammered, holding hands and walking in something of a zigzag, all the way keeping our forward motion. Something is hilarious. I have no idea what. But something certainly is. I am still talking like I come from the Bronx. “I don’ wyatch it, but if yoo wanna wyatch the gyame, I’ll fuckeng wyatch it!” My stomach hurts from laughing.

There is a bar literally opposite my apartment block that I have been wondering about for a while. It looks like an unassuming old man’s pub and some boys I met from Sweden a few weeks ago told me that they had ended up in there almost every night before returning to where they were staying, a block away. It stays open until 5 or 6 or some ungodly hour and those boys were Mark Twain Cool, so I assumed it would be safe enough. It was quite easily decided that this bar would be the spot for our last drink of the evening.

We open the door. We walk in. Somewhere in the distance, a fruit machine plays a tinny tune. The air is musty, the faint smell of stale beer. A tumble weed blows past. We’ve opened the door. The bartender has seen us. There is no turning back. Our steps are impossibly loud on the floor. This is no cool after hours drinking dive. No. This is Not. Where. We. Are. Supposed. To. Be. There is no music. The room is tiny, a small wooden bar along the one side its main feature. Propping themselves up on the bar are an old homeless man with a plastic bag full of possibly shoplifted items he tries to sell us and the bartender at random intervals (contents include 54% Rum and a tray of Belgian chocolates) and on the other end of the bar is a very boring and simultaneously massively creepy looking 50ish man. The bartender looks at us with indignation. We should not be here. We know it. He knows it. We just don’t know how to leave without making the situation even worse. Let me state that I was at first convinced the bartender was a masculine woman. Tanya was convinced it was a feminine man. I eventually conceded that he was in fact male. He was rocking some fierce guyliner. Not drag queen make up, rather, getting up and fixing your face for the day makeup. You know, basic foundation, liquid eyeliner lids and a lick of mascara. His shirt was red satin with a black fringe, pearl snap buttons and patterned, silver collar tips. We were very possibly in the scariest gay bar in the world. The bartender was hating us. The other guy was hating us. We were by then hating ourselves. Only the homeless man found our presence entertaining and would every so often, point at us and say something in German and laugh hysterically. We were all thinking it. He was only one crazed enough to vocalise it. It was the single most awkward drink I’ve ever had in my life.

When we were done with our drinks we paid and walked as casually as possible toward the door. As soon as we were out of it, we sprinted across the street and into the safety of my apartment building. In hysterics, we climbed the stairs, trundled into the apartment and collapsed. As it stands, ‘Funfundreissig’ or ‘The Gay Vampire Bar’ (as it is now known) is not on my list of bars to frequent.

Needless to say, we slept in on Saturday.

Art Beast.... and miles to go before I sleep

On Thursday afternoon the girls and I were walking down MainzerStrasse on our way to an alcohol induced something or other. Passing by the Milkabilly Rock n Roll Milk/Soda/Waffle Bar and a tattoo parlour, we spy a small art gallery. Zozoville Gallery. A Mecca of galleries. No snotty assistants, no severe haircuts, no stark white walls, no abstract anything. Instead, it’s a small room that looks warm and inviting, a bench outside to cater to passing smokers in need of a sit down. The gallery appears to be run by/feature the work of two artists: Johan Potma and Mateo Dineen. We go and have a look around and we are all enthralled. The work is beautiful and a little comical and sometimes sad and whimsical and often, the tiniest bit heartbreaking. The girls love Johan Potma's stuff, who seems to specialise in fanciful furry creatures and somewhat endearing monsters while I fall utterly in love with Mateo’s work. It’s acrylic (I am almost certain, thought not enough of a connoisseur to be of a definite stand point) on various surfaces. Some are on standard canvases, but they also have paintings done on the back of geometry set tins (remember your first day of high school and your shiny new maths set?) the tops of old wooden chests, armoire doors and the rogue covers of DDR era fridges.
On the wall, on the back of a box top, is a small painting of a small man under a night sky in a forest, his chin in his hands, looking into a campfire and birds nesting in his white bear hunting style hat. (I pause to notice how I own a similar hat., sans birds.... sometimes....) I love the picture. I LOVE IT. and then, as I am swimming in its delight, I notice how at the bottom, a phrase is inscribed:
“...and miles to go before I sleep...”
This piece of work that I am so instantly and utterly drawn to is not only one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have seen, it is also INSPIRED BY A FUCKING FROST POEM?!I am undone.
I must have it.
I need it.
it makes me want to have a permanent address so that I might have somewhere to hang it. This Mateo, he of the beautiful beautiful art, knows Frost?
Tanya sees a piece that she loves and inquires of the price. It is 2500EUR. Holy God. That’s half a years rent in Berlin. I am afraid to even ask the price of my painting. I know I will not be able to afford it and I know that the disappointment of the concrete fact will crush me. So instead I go over the boxes of prints and sift carefully through. Woe is me, the print is not there. The girls find other prints they love and purchase them. They pay their money to a tall blond man who is, typically for the city, far too good looking for his own good.. Sullenly, art printless, I start to leave the shop and then ask, in a fit of optimism to the blond, “You don’t happen to have a print of the Frost painting some where?”
He says, “Actually, I made some of those today. I haven’t put them out yet. Do you want one?”
Firstly: Holy hell, YES.
Secondly: Is this hot blond Mateo? He of the penchant for whimsical heartbreak and Frost?
As he goes into the studio or back room or whatever magical Alladins cave it is that holds these treasures, I lean over the girls and whisper, “Art. Beast.”
He returns with my print. I attempt to pay him and find myself quite suddenly with too many thumbs and an alarming lack of dexterity. Put me in fumbling distance of a talented beast and chances are I will indeed fumble. I berate my hands. I momentarily loathe myself. As we leave, he says, “We are having a gallery party here on Saturday night. There will be music and food and a silent auction. You girls should come.” I make some noises that seem to be a garbled vocal agreement to the flippant invitation and stumble out into the freezing Berlin night, my Frost print close to my chest. Mateo, the boy genius with the love for frost is a 6ft tall Californian Art Beast? If I didn’t love Berlin before, I am pledging allegiance now.
Anyway, Saturday night rolls around and we head over the gallery to find it RAMMED. there was literally not even space to step inside. So Tanya, Sarah and I decide to go get a drink and a bite to eat and head back later and see if anything is still going on. I can’t even see my Frost Painting on the wall and I feel myself jonesing. I want to see it again. Just like the way Shell can’t go near the Tate Modern without spending some time with “her” Monet. We agree to return post sustenance. Dinner is fantastic and delicious and in a restaurant with a black and white checked floor so beautiful I want to press my face to it, but for the sake public decency, don’t. More about that another time. After we eat ourselves into an Italian coma, we trudge back up Mainzer Strasse (this time slightly heavier with wine and pasta) and find, joy of joys, the gallery still open and with somewhat more room to manoeuvre. We go in. The painting is there. I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at it. A man who works there asks Tanya (who is armed with her camera) not to take close ups. I spy Art Beast. Inexplicably, I am smitten. Or, completely understandably. Depending on how you look at it. The Frost quote on the painting has been up on my (kill me now) book mood wall since I got here. I feel a cosmic alignment I want to hold onto with both hand followed swiftly by a brief wave of sobriety and I know that the cosmos has fuck all hand in this. Lots of people like Frost. Not as many as should, but a lot, none the less. He is wearing a polka dot shirt and being the artist of the hour. I want to go up to him and get aggressively in his face about the painting and ask if he has a Birches inspired painting in the works and if so, how much will it be, so I can start saving now. [side note: an old friend of mine from NYC, SS, is an INCREDIBLE artist. Unbelievable. I went through a good few months of being, quite plainly, obsessed with Birches and as a result of my obsession, she painted the most beautiful piece, over the prints of emails I had sent her quoting the poem. Even my typos were included. It was extraordinary. It’s been two years since I’ve spoken to SS (heartbreaking in itself, I am sure with good reason but sadly ones I know not of) and I cannot even hear Frost without thinking of her and what was to me, a simply awe inspiring work of hers. Anyway]
I don’t go up to Art beast. I salivate over the Frost Painting. I tentatively ask the dude who works there of the price. He tells me it is 2450EUR. FUCK ME. Worth every penny, I am certain, and if I had it, I would buy it. But I am dealing with discount supermarkets here. I really should not even be allowed in galleries at this point.

Tanya and I get a drink and check out more of the work and she buys a bunch more prints (from the other dude Johan Potma) and a t-shirt (been there, done that, yadda yadda) and we go and smoke a cigarette on the thoughtfully laid out afore mentioned benches. It takes us a good fifteen minutes to eventually drag our asses out of the vicinity of the gallery and head (the whole three and a half minutes) home. Every time we go to leave I need to see my painting (“my painting?!”) one more time. We look at the painting, we take six steps out the door, we turn, we look at the painting again, almost leave, go back to look at the painting, repeat ad nauseam.

We went home. Print safely in my possession. Art Beast and original art work still at large.

Things I LOVE/HATE about Berlin. Part 2

Things I Love
The Beasts of Berlin.
I know I have spoken of the aforementioned beasts previously, but since then I have had more time to further process and hone my, frankly bordering on vulgar, perversion. I have invented a new game whereby once a beast is spotted he is nicknamed and given a place in the pecking order, of most beastly to least beastly beasts seen that day. At the end of the day I award a small prize award to The Beast of The Day. The Beast of the Day award is for the large part a redundant exercise. There is no physical proof of it, no certificate. It proves absolutely no purpose except to entertain myself and whoever I am with.
Last Friday, for instance, Tamaryn and I partook in beast spotting all over this fine adoptive city of mine.

Potentials for Beast of the Day were:

Preemie Beast
Young enough to do without shaving. Not so young it was illegal.

Lord Beast
English Aristocratic god with Rod Stewart hair in navy McQueen coat who asked us for drinking establishment recommendations. Wore brogues.

Blond Beast
Possibly wearing foundation. Didn’t detract from his beastliness. That is saying something.

Waving Beast
Driving past us on Unter der Linden. Checking us out checking him out checking us out. He looked first. Awkward ‘deer in headlights’ moment as both parties realised we were busted mid scope. Beast smiled, waved. Charmed.

Beast on a bike
Possible cycle courier. possibly rocking a half shaved dread locked disaster on his head. Didn’t even care.

DJ Beast
Playing 60s Motown and swing beats in fantastic bar in Friedrichshain (aka my hood), black shirt buttoned all the way up, severe moustache. Most certainly in the Top Ten Most Beautiful People I Have Ever Seen In Real Life.

DJ BEAST WON! Hands down. It was not ever FAIR to the other beasts.

(side note. My dad reads this blog. Sorry dad. I swear I am also writing a book and being productive. Also, any distractions this city has made me succumb to I blame wholeheartedly on my genetic coding. I am a de Fine.)

Nat is here now and we spent the evening eating Thai food, walking around Friedrichshain, drinking rice beer (me) and lemon grass tea (her) and explaining the rules of Beast of the Day. She has proved to be an apt pupil. One day initiation done and dusted, tomorrow we hit Prenzlauerberg. Five bucks says she spots the winner. I am a wonderful teacher.

Things I Hate
The goddamn early flights that arrive in this city. This morning I went to the airport to pick up Nat. I only got three hours sleep before having to get up and go through to the flughafen. That’s right. That’s some elementary German right there. Now Nat is one of my best friends. We have been through some things together. More trips to New York than is healthy, delicious eggs, more hotel bars in more cities I can begin to count, road trips, whipsnade, bars, chemo (hers), shaving heads (hers again), recovery, bars, more bars, more treatments, less bars. She was the girl who helped me with my broken heart. I was the girl who made her wear skinny jeans. We are a team. And I am honestly so so happy to see her, but this morning, on the S-Bahn back from the airport all I could do was yawn and shiver and feel that awful prickly feeling I get when I am desperately in need of sleep. And for a few awful, awful hours, I was a terrible friend. I was not a hostess with the mostess. I could see Nat look at me in that way, arching her eyebrow as if to say, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? I come all the way to Berlin to see you and you can’t even get it together to PRETEND to be excited to see me?’ Shame washed over me. Hot prickling shame. Embarrassed and apologetic, I locked myself in my room for a one hour disco nap. When I awoke, it was as if it was a new day. I bounced out of bed, my hair awry, jumped on her bed, accidently sort of bit her arm in my excitement and hugged her. I am sometimes a bit shitty, but I make nice when I can. Needless to say, I’m ecstatic she’s here and cant wait for our friend Tanya to come and join us from NYC on Thursday. Bastard flies in at 7am and I have to go get her from the airport. Expect repeat scene. Balls.

My final word on 'The Skirt'

Completely inappropriately, this bizarre little dance was captured at the very sombre and fascinating 'Holocaust Memorial.' I promise that the image captured is not at all reflective of my feelings about the memorial, the travesty it spoke of nor the shitty weather we were experiencing at that moment. Frankly, i don't know what is going on with it. However, it does show my skirt. Corlia, I have no more to say on the matter.

Poor but sexy

How to eat your way through three days

I am cutting teeth. One would hope at my age that such glories as pushing new bits of dentyne and nerves and enamel through sensitive gums would be a thing of the years past, but no. My wisdom teeth are making their presence known. It hurts. it feels like I am chewing on a mouthful of gravel sized glass. In what I can only assume is some sort of reaction to it, I have also taken to grinding my teeth/clenching my jaw in my sleep. When I wake in the morning, I have to literally pry apart my upper and lower jaw with the use of my hands. Needless to say, I am somewhat unhappy with the whole situation.

Anyway. Enough about that. This past weekend was graced with a visitor so therefore I spent more time concentrating on eating and drinking than I did on my teeth. Tamaryn was in town. She arrived on Friday morning and we spent the morning taking in a whirlwind tour of the city. It went something like this:
Checkpoint Charlie
Course of wall
Holocaust memorial
Brandenburg tor
check, check, check, check.
Can we start eating yet?

Our first food stop was to eat some currywurst. Berlin is famous for inventing the snack, credited to a Charlottenburg woman called Herta Heuwer sometime after WW2, using the ketchup and curry powder she acquired from British soldiers to dress the plain old pork sausage up in new, post war garb. I tried currywurst a few weeks ago from a place called ‘Konnopke’, arguably Berlins most famous currywurst stand and was UNDERWHELMED. nothing about it was good for me. it wasn’t inedible... but it wasn’t good either. The sausage was rubbery, the curry was nonexistent, the ketchup was an unnatural coloured, watered down mess usually found at Wimpy restaurants. Currywurst, I decided, was a tradition the germans could keep for themselves. However, I read about this place called Wittys. Wittys is an imbiss stand (a sort of snack hut) on the northwest corner of Wittenbergplatz. Its specialty is, of course, currywurst. I heard that the chips were the best in the city, the wurst delicious. But it was something else that piqued my interest. Everything was organic. So I thought, if I was going to foray back into the wurst thicket, I would do so with organic intent.
After our whirlwind sightseeing tour, we hit the imbiss stand. And on my days. OH MY DAYS. It was so delicious I almost wept. The chips were thick cut and golden, crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside, the sausage was soft, flavorful and spicy, the tomato sauce was deep red – clearly made of real tomatoes. Having eaten Wittys currywurst, I do believe I understand why Germany sells 800 million servings of it a year.

After our delicious lunch (that I won’t lie to you, we flat hand shoveled into our mouths) we headed across the street to KaDeWe, up to its heavenly 6th floor food hall. KaDeWe (Europe’s biggest department store) is, if I am well behaved, where I am going to go when I die. Picture miles and miles of marble counters, champagne bars, sushi, pretzels, fresh pasta, oysters, bird of paradise coloured exotic fruit, whole counters dedicated solely to eggs, wraparound counters of cheese, cheese islands even, the smell of baking bread, chocolates, truffles and cured meat. One of my favourite things to do is to drink champagne in lavish food halls. I love everything about it. The man sitting next to you polishing off a 120eur bottle of rose champagne alone, the ladies what lunch with their white china tureens of steaming soup, their diamonds glinting in the store lights, the smell of Chanel as you walk past. I love the sound of cracking lobster claws a few counters along, the tempting call of the cheese counter from the next room, and knowledge that if you take two lefts and then a right you will end up at the canapé counter where the swan shaped profiteroles swim idly by on silver trays. Food halls are my heaven. KaDeWe might have surpassed Paris’ Galeries Lafayette as my favourite.

Other food highlights from the weekend include but are not limited to:
Afternoon tea and cake (or champagne and apple tart) at Opernpalais on Unter den Linden
Peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes from Cupcake
Long and lazy Sunday brunch that included hearty portions of stuffed deep fried artichoke hearts
Raclette from Winterfeldt Markt (the most delicious and extraordinary food market)
Sweet, crunchy pears the size of rugby balls
Cheese, figs and pretzels before going out
A drunken 3am hunt for falafel that ended in a drunken 3am molestation of burgers, chips and sugary soft drinks. Seriously. How can something so bad be SO GOOD?

So Tam has gone back to London and I am tired, kind of bloated and, to be honest, strangely hungry. I am doing my utmost to hold off for few more days until I venture back to Wittys. But I’m not sure just how long I can hold out.

If you don't care about cars, look away now.

Interlagos BLEW MY MIND!

Some highlights for me included:

Reuben’s rather suspect pit stop with 8 laps to go. I love it when Ross Brawn plays favourites. (Actually, I now know that Reubens had a puncture and therefore had to get new tyres.... but I like my original evil thoughts better, so I’m sticking with them.)

Kimi’s incredible start. Kimi was on fire! Fantastically, after a fuel hose malfunction courtesy of the I believe soon to be unemployed Kovalainen, Kimi was literally ON FIRE. Imagining that moment in Kimi’s helmet is hilarious. Do you think he even noticed?

The fact that it was the Brawn mechanics who managed to detach the fuel hose from the McLaren.

That hilarious little tussle between trulli and sutil after they both konked out of the race. Jarno, the 'wraparound polarised lense sunglasses most often seen on cyclists' wearing Italian has NEVER been a favourite of mine and to see him stand up on his tippy toes and reach up as far as his little arms could go to push the calm and well behaved Sutil around was GOLD.

Jenson’s aggressive overtaking. The man was inspired.

Kobayashi’s showing on his first race. We’ve had so many driver changes this season and the Japanese replacement for Toyota’s Timo Glock is the only one who hasn’t left me feeling distinctly underwhelmed. Jaime Alguersuari might be a treat to look at, but that preemie beast sure knows how to finish a race dead last.

Heidfeld running out of fuel. Let me say that again. Heidfeld. Ran. Out. Of. Fuel.
Idiot.

The smile and shrug thing Nico did after his gearbox went and he was forced to retire. One day, he will be in charge of our children’s manners. He has class.

Brawn’s inaugural Constructers Championship.

Jenson Button, the new world champion. I knew it was going to be a good day when I saw his pops sitting in the garage, wearing that pink shirt. I am SO SO happy. Seriously. You'd think I know the dude.

So tonight, in celebration of two championship titles and a ridiculously good race, why not make like Kimi Raikkonen and get fucked up with a Flaming Ferrari?

Flaming Ferrari
Ingredients
3 oz. Dark Rum
3 oz. White Rum 2 oz. Blue Curacao
Instructions
Pour the white rum into a glass. Add the dark rum. Pour the Blue Curacao into a separate shot glass. Light the rum mixture and suck with a straw. Whilst doing this, pour in the Blue Curacao into the glass and finish. ALWAYS USE CAUTION WITH FIRE.
(Recipe from http://www.barnonedrinks.com/)

Bands in bookshops

Last night I went to East of Eden bookshop on Schreinerstrasse. There, I saw a band called 'before you die...' (Yes, if you're wondering, bands playing in bookshops is a common enough occurence in Berlin)

before you die... might be my new favourite band. They're everything I want in a band. Their music is some some of swamp blues gypsy megaphone fuelled folk. They look like they've just walked out of a Mark Twain novel. A banjo is involved. It's fucking fantastic. They're a sort of a Swedish 'Dead Brothers' but quite possibly better.

You can hear them here.

Do it. You won't be sorry.

The Skirt

For Corlia. Just me and my skirt, hanging out.

The Debacle of the Black Leather Mini Skirt

(A story in 2 parts. Part 2)

Okay, so, I decided that I needed to buy a black leather mini skirt. It couldn’t just be a regular old black skirt, as I already have one of those and I can’t afford to be doubling up on wardrobe pieces at this stage of my life. So, I decided that black leather it was to be. And not slutty biker black leather, nothing you’d see in Coyote Ugly or could imagine Paris Hilton wearing. Rather, something vintage, high waisted, the skirt equivalent of Michael Crowe’s literary sock, ‘a sock you can really read something in.’ It would go with EVERYTHING! I could just imagine it. Tucking my grey wife beater into it. Pairing it with my black riding boots and Chloe Paddington. The coupling of my future skirt and grey woolly tights would be the Bill and Hillary of my wardrobe, the power couple. My skirt and I were going to do great things, write great books, travel to great places, see great sights. I may have put unnecessary pressure on the poor skirt.

So, like any girl on a budget, I hit the second hand stores. I have seen the insides of some second hand stores in Berlin. From the top of Prenzlauer Berg to the bottom of Kreuzberg, I’ve looked. I looked for days. And days. Sure, there were skirts, but none of them were quite right. Too long, too small, too shiny, too expensive. Eventually, at a store a little closer to home, the Humana near Alexander Platz (not the mammoth five storey store I previously mentioned) I found two contenders. I traipsed into the dressing room and found that the first, while fantastic on the hanger, was not ideal when it was on. It was intended for someone with both a smaller waist and bigger ass than I. To say that the cut was odd is an understatement. It also had two very strange pockets that caused the front of the skirt to balloon somewhat when you moved. It was not hot. I put the skirt back on the hanger and tried the second one on. The second one... the second one was PERFECT! It was everything I wanted in a skirt. It veered just on the right side of rock n roll without collapsing over the line into joan jett and her power mullet territory. It begged to be paired with an oversized bun and a cardigan. It was my Michael Crowe literary sock. And it was only 9 euros! Result.

Happy that I had found my skirt, I put my jeans back on and stepped into my riding boots. I zipped up my left boot, smiling to myself. I zipped up my right boot and found that smile quickly dissipate into abject horror as the slider from the zipper of my right boot detached itself from the teeth. My knee length boot flopped open, a leather puddle at my ankle. I sat in near tears, trying desperately to fix the zip. But it would not fix. It was, quite truly, pretty fucked. These are my favourite boots. Right now, they are my only boots. I NEED THESE BOOTS. Winter in Berlin begs for boots like these. Eventually, I made peace with the fact that these boots could not be fixed without some pliers, some scissors and a needle and thread. I would have to go home and fix them there. However, I couldn’t walk with the boot flapping open as my foot kept slipping out. So I tried to tuck the boots into my jeans, a reverse from the usual jeans into boots look I usually go for. The thing is, I wear pretty tight jeans. Skinny jeans. As it is, there is little room to manoeuvre, never mind make space for a knee high leather boot. So it ended up that I could fit the top 5 inches or so into the jeans and the rest of the boot sort of scrunched up around my ankle. Think of a leather leg warmer, if you will. I unzipped my other boot and did the same thing with it. If I was going to look ridiculous, I at least wanted to look even whilst I did it. Unhappy, I grabbed my skirt, went to pay, and then walked the 25 minutes home in my stupid, broken boots.

At home I performed an hour long boot surgery to seeming success. The boots zip up again, but they are fragile and frankly, I don’t know how much longer they have left in them. Trying to focus on the positive, I think ‘Well, at least I have my skirt.’ With great ceremony, I take it from my bag to admire it. And horror of horrors, I took the wrong fucking skirt. Oh god. In my hands in the tiny waist, huge ass, bubble stomach pocket skirt. Oh no no no. This skirt is not a skirt I can really read something in! I have to exchange it. Another terrible realisation dawns. I have to exchange it and I’m going to have to do that IN GERMAN. I’m not happy. So the next day I go back to Humana and spend a good hour looking for the other skirt. That Humama boasts that it has over 20 000 articles of clothing and I’m pretty certain I looked through at least 7000 of those to locate the skirt I accidentally left behind the day before. Skirt in hand, I go up the counted and in my best German (which, honestly, still isn’t very good) ask if I can exchange. The skirts cost the same amount, however I see that the skirt I purchased was previously more and marked down. You can’t exchange sale items. Eventually, through verbal grovelling in broken German and an inadvertently comedic skit that involved me demonstrating just how bad that skirt looked on me, the kind woman behind the counter broke down and let me exchange. And then she gave me this look, as if to say, “You, get out. Before I change my mind.” I grabbed the skirt (the right one!) off the counter and skipped out of the store, running gleefully home.

I'm happy to report that I was right about my skirt. It goes with everything. It even makes a pair of broken boots look good.

Leg(ging)less in Berlin

(A story in 2 parts. Part 1)

Londoners know two things: Abstract anger and leggings. The former needs little further said. If you’ve ever ridden the tube at rush hour, you know what I mean. I don’t hate it. I kind of love it. It’s intrinsic to the workings of The Big Smoke and somewhat endearing; a blood vessel in the thigh of the city I love and call home. However... The leggings. We can talk about the leggings. You cannot brush past a hipster in topshop without being in a two foot radius of a legging clad beast. It’s been this way for some time now. I’m not judging it. I am part of it. I wear leggings. I understand the love of leggings, the damn near need. If only all leg wear gave one such comfort, such freedom, looked so good tucked into riding boots. However, love, freedom and comfort can lead one into a false sense of security and for a while there I believed that leggings were a universal (read: first world, vogue reading) fact. However, after arriving in Berlin and travelling no more than the distance than the airport to my apartment a horrific internal line of questioning made itself known:
“Holy God, have leggings not arrived in Berlin? or, have they arrived and left? Am I wearing work out gear in public right now? Is this more or less ridiculous than when Edie Sedgewick wore her ballet get ups to bars in NYC in the 60s?” after a mild panic attack on the S-bahn, I look down at my outfit and think, Fuck Edie. This is a good look.

In any case, the question has continued to plague me: Where are the leggings? What are girls wearing instead? There are a lot of leg covering variations but no consistent through and through replacement. I have been on the lookout as I need a new pair. My black leggings, trusted companions I bought in SA for R30 has a homeless sized hole in the left leg of them (amongst other smaller holey friends) and frankly, no amount of darning can repair them to the state of public showing. They are beyond help. So I’ve been looking for some new ones, to no avail. After a while (as in, from my arrival to now) I have given up the leggings charade, thinking I should move on. My plan to move on went like this.
1) I need some good thick tights for winter. Something more aggressive than the old opaque black staples. Something REALLY wintery. Something..... Woolly. Maybe a grey pair. I don’t know. Why not?
2) To go with my hot new/grannyesque tights, I need a black skirt.
After I arrived here I realised that my somewhat new but wholly beloved high waisted brass buttoned black mini skirt was accidently packed away in some godforsaken black hole of a cupboard somewhere in south London. Thus, to survive winter in Berlin I needed a new one. And the more I thought about it the more I thought that a regular black skirt simply wouldn’t cut the mustard. What I needed to go with my wardrobe was.... was... was... a Black. Leather. Mini. Skirt.
Okay, before I get into the debacle of buying said skirt, let me give you a quick rundown of how I stand, clothing wise. Three years ago I was one of the glorious 8% of females who owned and wore more than 108 pairs of shoes. I had more clothes than I can even pretend to be embarrassed about. I loved my wardrobe. I fucking loved it. I had pink silk shirts, gold lurex dresses, polka dot poodle skirts I bought in Italy and kept ‘just in case’ I ever found the occasion to wear them. Platforms from the nineties, vintage 50s pumps, grey mohair gloves that reached my elbows and filled me with pure, unadulterated joy.... I OWNED ALL OF THESE THINGS.
However, time and life has moved on. I no longer have the space or money to store such frivolous wonders. So, as time has gone on, I’ve shed more and more of my so called crap and am now the not quite so proud owner of less than 40 pairs of shoes. It pains me. I know that I am a shallow bitch and that people in Africa are starving, but still it pains me. The machete I’ve had to take to my shoe collection pains me more than I can ever fully tell you. I digress. When it comes time for me to move place to place (as I do) my wardrobe decisions are made somewhat easier by my condensed wardrobe. I have two good pairs of jeans. One, a dark blue pair tapered to the ankle, the other, a light blue stone wash ripped to shreds. I wear wife beaters. They are my go to top of choice. I own one black cardigan (a hand me down from Shelley that neither I nor her are ever sure that she in fact handed down, but still, two years and several notches down the colour black scale later, I continue to wear) and it goes with very wife beater I own. I have a few shirts I’m partial to.
My outfits, generally, go something like this:
jeans/leggings + wifebeater/ shirt + good shoes + beret/russian bear hunting hat/sack of eggs knitted hat + scarf.

Scarves are one of the reasons I love winter. It is my firm belief that any outfit can be made massively more appealing with the addition of a hat and scarf. A regular old combination of blue jeans and a white wife beater can be transformed with the addition of a scarf. Hermes was the god of travellers. Later, the fashion failsafe of the basically clothed everywhere. I rest my case.

In any case, I sometimes get a little bored of my repertoire. Especially considering that I count myself, if not groundbreaking (although I still hold that I was the girl who brought deck shoes back to Battersea) somewhat stylish. I arrived in Berlin with almost NO CLOTHES: some wife beaters, two pairs of jeans, a pair of leggings, white brogues, white plimsolls, black platform high heels, pink heels, black riding boots, my trusty leather jacket that belonged to a succession of Sharp aunts until arriving on my willing back in 1999. My meagre selection of clothes is supplemented with lots of fantastic hats and scarves. And that’s always been okay for me. Until I arrived in Berlin and my leggings are no longer acceptable to wear in public and it gold cold and wintery and I thought, “Goddamn, I need some woolly tights and a LEATHER MINI SKIRT”

As it turns out, woolly tights are easy enough to come across in Berlin. Unlike leggings. And the skirt.... Well, the debacle of the leather mini skirt will follow. For now, just know, if you’re coming to visit, buy your leggings in London. They are, as we say in the classics, “not so much in this town.”

He must have the constitution of an ox

I think we’ve clearly established my status as a bona fide food snob. Being a food snob is hard work, but someone has to do it. I’ve come up against some pretty tough haters in my time as a food snob. There are those that believe that chickens really do have small bits of flesh in the guise of ready breaded nuggets, those who think that ‘a really huge portion for £3.99’ constitutes quality, those who think that truffles are a scam, because, and I quote, ‘mushrooms is mushrooms, innit.’ KILL ME NOW.
However, the herculean task of the food snob is to cohabit with the antifoodsnob. And by that, I do not mean those people who love their frozen pizzas, their ready meals, their doner kebabs. Because, and while I do not take pride in saying this, those people who love their junk, at least LOVE their junk. They get some sort of happy kick from the trans-fats and excess salts and E numbers. at least, in some perverse way, it’s about flavour. Sure, they’ll never understand the pure joy of a soft shell crab spider roll from Zuma, but then again, that is true for many people, and I don’t have the time or energy to hate all of them. No, the antifoodsnob I speak of is one who lives by this motto: EAT TO LIVE, DON’T LIVE TO EAT. blow me down. I cannot fucking cope.
Okay, I am the first to admit that I am living on the cheap. Almost every night I eat some variation of an oriental rice dish (enough carbs so that I don’t get hungry: check. Fresh vegetables: check. Chilli: check. that’s the big three right there.) but my rice dish is still delicious, nutritious and most importantly, it takes me one step closer to having a wad of cash to splurge on delicious food when one of my many visitors who will be landing soon enough arrive. I love good food, but I also love sharing that experience with people, so I am more than happy to eat my delicious bowl of thai curry and rice and save up the money I didn’t spend so that when my friends arrive, we can go to CUPCAKE and eat them out of house and home. But I digress... So, cohabiting with an ‘Eattolive.....r.' It’s hell. The man I am living with has such a shocking ambivalence toward what he puts into his mouth it makes me cower in radiated shame. He doesn’t feel it, but jesus man, have a heart. Some of us do. He makes these.... well, I can only describe them as soups, that I swear would have a homeless person pocketing a bread roll and professing, ‘I’m good mate, thanks anyway.’ THe other day he made one of chunks of cucumber, chunks of courgette and more dill than is healthy. Oh, and brussel sprouts. And trust me, before you even BEGIN to think that the combination of cucumber and dill could work, just stop. The chunks were so big they could’ve been used as beacons to direct planes into parking bays. Another ‘soup’ that made me almost die was a combination of tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, potatoes and CUT UP VIENNAS. The remainders of both of those gourmet abominations are still sitting in my fridge. Every time I open the door to retrieve something from it, I have a small, but distinct mini sick. Last night I had a dream that I was at Shelley and Pauls for the Singapore GP and Shelley made one of her incredible oriental soups. In the dream, we ate all the soup (which was, even in REM, amazing) and at the end of meal, kyle wanted more. For some reason, Shelley and Paul's was somehow in Berlin. So, I said to Kyle, “there’s more in the kitchen.” Kyle trotted off to refill his bowl. He returned with a bowl of green coloured SLUDGE. It was the cucumber/courgette/dill/brussel spout disaster.
The ensuing conversation went like this:
Me: Kyle, that’s not the soup we were eating. Check on the stove.
Kyle: There was no more on the stove. I found this is the fridge.
Me: Does it look like Shelley made that?
Kyle: No... but it was in the fridge... so I figured....
Me: Get that out of here. Seriously.
Kyle then retreats to kitchen to pour away green sludge. He returns with a bowl of the vegetables and vienna fiasco that makes me have the mini sick.
Me: Kyle.... What is in your hand?
Kyle: Soup! Can I also not eat this one?
By this stage Shelley and I are almost frothing at the mouth.
Me: NO! NO YOU CAN’T! YOU CANNOT EAT THAT SHIT. IT’S SHIT! THERE ARE CUT UP HOTDOGS IN IT! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
and then, in my dream, I cried. I actually cried. as in, I wept. Because I know that the people who understand this shit about me are very far away and it’s not easy caring about gremolata when it feels like most people don’t even know how to spell the word. Don’t think that I haven’t been judged for bringing my Microplane to Berlin. That’s right. I travel with my own grater. Because I can almost guarantee you that if I come to stay at your house, 98% of the time your grater will just not be good enough. I am a freak like that. I really am.

A quick but important disclaimer: I know that, that dream sequence would never happen in reality. I know that if Kyle went to the kitchen, saw the pot on the stove was empty, went to the fridge and saw those two abominations of so called ‘meals’ he would probably just throw them out. Without anyone’s consent or knowledge, he would just rid the house of them. Because he understands me like that. While I am food freak, I am not alone. It’s a family trait. So I can be a food snob. I’m in good company as a food snob. In fact, there’s no company in which I would rather be.

The sound of Berlin is that of empties clinking

Germany has a very old school bottle deposit policy. Beer, bottled water and soft drinks are subject to a small deposit (or pfand,) usually at 8c a beer bottle, but up to 25c depending on the bottle type and store it’s bought from. Lidl, for instance, runs at a strict 25c a bottle. Sure, you can get that money back, but they want you to put a down payment on your shame. [see The Pork Shank Redemption] Most supermarkets have these machines that you feed your empties into via a gaping mouth with two tiny conveyor belts inside. A mechanical ‘open wide for the aeroplane’ in my mind. When you’re done, you press a little green button and out pops a receipt, a store credit voucher, if you will. With this you can go and buy more beer. Or, if you were so inclined, fresh fruit and vegetables. The choice is yours. It is also possible to take your empties to one of the many, many Turkish convenience (read: bottle) stores that around, where such mechanical wonders do not exist. In this case, you rather put the bottles in crates and the dude behind the counter deducts however many bottles you’ve returned x8c off your next purchase. Incidentally, returning 6 bottles to my local late night store will leave you with a 32c bill to pay for one bottle of beer. The plus side to the system is that one becomes fanatical about recycling. And I think we can all agree, recycling: good. Waste: bad. The not quite so good part is that to get to the point where the return of your bottles gives you the illusion of free beer, your stock of empties makes you look like you live in a frat house.... Or at Shellrick on a Thembi-less week. It also means that when you walk down the street on your way to damage your liver/save the planet, you clink.

Clinking is the sound of the city. The other day I sat outside a cafe and counted clinkers walk past me. There were eleven. In a row. Eleven people walked past. Eleven people clinked. It wasn’t even a busy street. There was an old woman, and I mean OLD, walking with a walking stick in each hand. She had a backpack on. And the backpack that clinked. She was one of the illustrious eleven.

My landlord/housemate told me that he once saw an industrious drunk in Amsterdam feed full bottles he took off the shelves of a supermarket into the machine at the back. He used the ‘deposit’ money to buy a six pack.

All this begs the question that I know that some of you are asking, “You are drinking beer?”
Incredibly, yes. While I haven’t been completely adverse to the poison of choice for frat boys and their funnels everywhere, it’s by no means my first choice of intoxicant. However, I can no longer go to wine as my drink of choice (damn you grape intolerance!) and there’s something so sordid about a bottle of whiskey for one. So beer is something I have been partaking in the pleasures of. It’s also an easy option when ordering out. By all accounts, wine lists here can be a veritable minefield. “Ein bier bitte” is a phrase that even the most linguistically challenged (a category in which, sadly, I find myself) can manage.

What Berlin looked like last month

.... to me anyway.

Click here for some photos of some things I saw and some places I went.

Germany, are you trying to kill me?!

I’ve been trying my best to ignore it but I can no longer pretend that this isn’t happening. I am trying to be good. I really am. But I can’t pretend anymore that Germany isn’t out to get me. For Superman, it was Kryptonite. For Achilles, his heel that was untouched by the River Styx. For me, it is the aisles and aisles of German Christmas Chocolate. I know what you’re thinking: October’s pretty early for Christmas Chocolate to hit the shops. It is. And the scary thing is that it’s been in the stores for nearly three weeks. Seriously. Advent calendar in September anyone? Do you know how hard it is to navigate the aisles of a crowded supermarket whilst trying desperately to avert your gaze from the skyscraper towers of festively wrapped sugary goodness?

I’ve tried. I’ve tried to get away from it. To not look. But I can’t do it anymore. I love Christmas. I love chocolate. Together, they are a formidable combination. How long is a girl expected to hold out and not give in to the Schoko-Lubkuchen, the Zimtsterern, the Vanillekipferl, the Stollen, the Barbie sized chocolate santas, the 1lb bags of milk chocolate balls, the marzipan squares wrapped like tiny presents? HOW LONG?!

The Germans know what they’re doing when it comes to Christmas. The wrappings of these festive treats, for instance, are strictly traditional. There’s none of that millennium themed silver and blue colour scheme, no Purple Ronnie stick figures wearing Santa hats and blowing noise makers. They stick to the tried and tested red, green, gold and snow. Sometimes there’s a log cabin on a snowy mountain side. Sometimes, they’ll include some reindeer, possibly a fat Santa. There are bells, holly, sleighs, baubles (in gold, red and green only), candy canes, fat wax pillar candles with their little wicks aglow. Now, add that Christmassy goodness to a box of candy and I am up against powers far greater than me. I’m just a girl who’s not supposed to eat sugar. With that in mind, maybe Germany wasn’t the best idea I've ever had.

I was pretty sad that I’m going to be leaving Germany before the Christmas Markets... But I see now that it’s a bit of a blessing in disguise. There is no way I would be able to behave myself at one of those.

Things I LOVE/HATE about Berlin. Part 1

Things I LOVE:
The Anarchists. Everything about them tickles me pink. Their extensive knowledge of out of print books with passages they can recite verbatim, their anti-establishment hair, their ripped jeans that really ‘say something,’ their dogs, their use of flags as wall hangings/curtains/head scarves. The way they look as you as if to say, “I believe in a lot of important stuff. What do you believe in? What? What? What?”
What can I say? I’m just another girl who thinks that democracy is a good idea. Silly me.

Things I HATE :
The kid in my building who is learning the recorder. It’s all afternoon and evening, EVERY afternoon and evening. Give it up kid. It’s the recorder!!! The recorder is not going to help you in later life. If you need to go through the awful process of being musically disinclined and learning an instrument may I suggest the guitar; bass or electric. Sid Vicious had NO TALENT and still managed to be a punk pin up and get laid. Take a leaf kid.