We're still in Berlin and we're still realising how useless a C-grade GCSE German education is. My Hungarian is now much better than my German, which is bloody frustrating. Irgum burgum! I keep speaking to the numerous Némets (Germans) in Hungarian, as does Peter. Hungarian has become our default 'other non-English person' language. Why on God's green earth can I not get it into my moderately dense skull that the German for "yes" is NOT "igen"?
But I digress. The sun is shining, there's plenty to do and the locals seem to enjoy having very dangerous picnics:
The struggle for an internet connection in the flat continues. For about 48 hours we managed to get the net through a WiFi router called 'netserdal', but even that wasn't great because the only place Peter could get a signal was on the ironing board:
He said, and I quote, "I call it 'WiFironing', not to be confused with 'wife ironing' -- a rare form of domestic violence". Quite.
If you've been watching the news, you'll know that the EU has celebrated its 50th birthday, and as Germany is the current chair, they had a stonking bash here ins Berlin. There were stalls up which would rival Goebbels for their mighty propaganda from every country and showing what they have excreted into the EU. To our horror, the Hungarian hovel mentioned nothing about heart disease, but they did sell all sorts of paprika potions.
An old man walked up to us and spoke in Polish, to which we gave the touristy "what the devil are you prattling about?" look. He said "You English?", we said "Yes", he pondered this for a while and tilted his head from side to side, then said "That's OK", as if somehow it might not have been. He continued to say "I from Poland. England is good!", gave us the thumbs up and walked away. Then the Blue Man Group turned up, so, natürlich, things got (to Peter's sickening delight)...zany!
Here are some pictures of the day's events, and a random kid dancing:
I found a delightfully youthful WiFi joint where we often spend several hours working and e-mailing. The place is always teeming with creative cosmopolitan types on their glorious Macbooks; I am amongst 'my people':
It's good that I can now produce my philosophical genius [ramblings - Ed] whilst online for quick reference, but all this intensive revision is getting to me, as Peter has so artistically demonstrated in film-noir style:
Ironically, however, Peter has no appreciation for Greek and Roman classical beauty whatsoever, which may explain why instead of taking in the impressive statues in the Pergamon museum, he juvenilely took pictures of all their posteriors:
He murmured that it was time well spent because there are 42 buttocks in the museum -- he claims that this justifies the theory that 42 is a magic number, but personally I think that's a load of arse.
Today was embarrassing. Peter got a text message from his step-dad which read "Did you know that there will be a demonstration at the Brandenburg gate this afternoon in favour of re-diving Germany?". We had marched all the way to the gate before we realised it was April 1st.
Just this abend I managed to connect to another WiFi router, through which we bring you this blog. Welcome to my new balcony/office:
The Erichiwi is doing very well on its 14th day of surveillance:
It smells quite strongly of kiwi, and has been described as "Remarkably kiwi-esque, given that it's a full moon" by readers of BBC Radio 4.
- Philip + Peter
But I digress. The sun is shining, there's plenty to do and the locals seem to enjoy having very dangerous picnics:
The struggle for an internet connection in the flat continues. For about 48 hours we managed to get the net through a WiFi router called 'netserdal', but even that wasn't great because the only place Peter could get a signal was on the ironing board:
He said, and I quote, "I call it 'WiFironing', not to be confused with 'wife ironing' -- a rare form of domestic violence". Quite.
If you've been watching the news, you'll know that the EU has celebrated its 50th birthday, and as Germany is the current chair, they had a stonking bash here ins Berlin. There were stalls up which would rival Goebbels for their mighty propaganda from every country and showing what they have excreted into the EU. To our horror, the Hungarian hovel mentioned nothing about heart disease, but they did sell all sorts of paprika potions.
An old man walked up to us and spoke in Polish, to which we gave the touristy "what the devil are you prattling about?" look. He said "You English?", we said "Yes", he pondered this for a while and tilted his head from side to side, then said "That's OK", as if somehow it might not have been. He continued to say "I from Poland. England is good!", gave us the thumbs up and walked away. Then the Blue Man Group turned up, so, natürlich, things got (to Peter's sickening delight)...zany!
Here are some pictures of the day's events, and a random kid dancing:
I found a delightfully youthful WiFi joint where we often spend several hours working and e-mailing. The place is always teeming with creative cosmopolitan types on their glorious Macbooks; I am amongst 'my people':
It's good that I can now produce my philosophical genius [ramblings - Ed] whilst online for quick reference, but all this intensive revision is getting to me, as Peter has so artistically demonstrated in film-noir style:
Ironically, however, Peter has no appreciation for Greek and Roman classical beauty whatsoever, which may explain why instead of taking in the impressive statues in the Pergamon museum, he juvenilely took pictures of all their posteriors:
He murmured that it was time well spent because there are 42 buttocks in the museum -- he claims that this justifies the theory that 42 is a magic number, but personally I think that's a load of arse.
Today was embarrassing. Peter got a text message from his step-dad which read "Did you know that there will be a demonstration at the Brandenburg gate this afternoon in favour of re-diving Germany?". We had marched all the way to the gate before we realised it was April 1st.
Just this abend I managed to connect to another WiFi router, through which we bring you this blog. Welcome to my new balcony/office:
The Erichiwi is doing very well on its 14th day of surveillance:
It smells quite strongly of kiwi, and has been described as "Remarkably kiwi-esque, given that it's a full moon" by readers of BBC Radio 4.
- Philip + Peter
posted by Philip Proudfoot at
12:15 am
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