flâneuse.de

the berlin diaries

Dienstag, 9. Mai 2006

Last night I moved into my new flat. Slightly more than I can really afford, but I love the flat, the area, and my new landlady, who is letting me stay the first two weeks for free because she's so relieved to have found someone who wants it for the whole three month period that she's away. This is one of the nicer things about not earning a proper wage: it simply isn't possible to turn down a favour if it will save you any money at all, and so life becomes a series of mutually beneficial arrangements which don't appear on any index of economic development. I spent a week with Lena, who misses having someone to chat to in the evenings, and now I am on Rozita's sofa whilst she makes the final arrangements for her trip to America. The first three weeks of my Berlin summer have been effectively free, and the money I have saved is paying for a kitchen and bathroom flooded with light in the morning, and a living room, bedroom and balcony bathed in afternoon sun. Last night I went out onto the balcony with a cigarette and a glass of wine to watch the sunset, and discovered a rosemary bush. There isn't another herb in the world I like as much as rosemary, and a summer of fragrant sautéed potatos and abundant green salad stretched before me.

Today I wake early and listen to Rozita getting ready. She is driving down to her job in Saxony, with a carful of strangers who will share the petrol costs. I wait until I hear the door shut and then stretch luxuriously, for the flat, the sunshine and Kreuzberg are all mine until Thursday evening. The first thing I do is go out onto the balcony and look up and down Graefestraße. Which direction looks good for breakfast? I want an organic baker's like the ones I know on Niederbarnimstraße and Zossenerstraße, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Down four flights of stairs to the street, I turn right for novelty's sake: I moved in from the left. There's a man in tracksuit bottoms doing press-ups on the pavement, and a group of beatboxing Turkish boys turn and dance at me as I pass them. Two minutes later, I'm astonished to find myself at the canal: I knew it was close, but not that close. It's full of young women in tight jeans with pushchairs, young men with pomade-slick black hair, elderly men with skullcaps and rough ends of cigarettes, and none of us can move quickly. But there's no organic baker's, so I cross over and keep going. Kottbusserstraße, and I can only read one in five of the shop names: the rest are all in Turkish or Arabic, and half of them are travel agents advertising cheap flights to Turkey. And now it's Kottbusser U-bahn station, and then I'm on Oranienstraße, where I finger bright balls of yarn, bursting with potential, but buy only 3.5mm needles. I walk up towards U-Görlitzerstraße, and over two hundred yards watch the Turkish shops give way to stylishly scruffy café-bars, where Berlin's tanned and tattooed youth consume coffee, salad and cigarettes. Still no organic baker's, so I compromise with a Milchkaffee and a gorgonzola and spinach crêpe, which is perhaps the most wonderful thing I've ever tasted. Someone throws a copy of the listings' magazineZitty onto the bench next to me. It only goes up to the tenth of May, which means that on Thursday there'll be a whole new fortnight of clubs and films and plays, and I'm fizzing with excitement just thinking about it. I can't wait.

On the way back, I cross over the canal on the other side of the road, and suddenly I'm in the middle of the Maybachufer market. It's amazing: Turkish food stalls filled with spices by the kilo, calves' feet, and bits of cow and half a dozen fruits that I can't even identify. There are pious German hippies sitting behind heaps of muddy organic vegetables, bolts of almost florescent satins and silks, and stout old ladies in hijab assessing the merits of bras made in cheap polyester lace. I get carried away and buy enough food for a family of five, including white courgettes, stout pink sticks of rhubarb, dark knobbly truffle potatos and a couple of hundred grams of mint. I have no idea what I'm going to do with that much mint: it's far too much for a potato salad, and there's no point making raita unless I'm cooking an entire Indian meal. Mojitos and real mint tea on my balcony are probably the only options. All day, every day.

Three months isn't nearly long enough.