I love the KaDeWe at Christmas

I love Berlin. I am going to miss it so very much when we leave. I also love the KaDeWe, Berlin's version of Harrods.

Christmas is something special at the KaDeWe. It's shiny, it's excessive, it's less 'less is more' and more 'more is more' with a whole bag of more thrown in on top.



Who doesn't need a mouse in a crown? Who doesn't want to be transported into another world? The KaDeWe can give you it all.

This year's theme is 'Alice in Wonderland'. Giant chairs, a giant teddy, a giant fireplace with giant Christmas stockings hanging from it.

You walk into a huge room lined with giant bookshelves which on it's own would be pretty outstanding. But with all it's beautiful things piled up and sparkling and shining and tempting, it's just gorgeous.

There aren't many things I wouldn't happily take home with me. I want bowls full of baubles decorated with fine glittery scrolls.

I want tables stacked high with golden cake stands and silver candelabras and one hundred snowglobes each one with Santa.

I'm pretty sure my new house would feel more homely were it filled with stars and flowers and golden dishes and incense.

I love this place. This is how Christmas should look. Marvellous.

Hello, Galeries Lafayette!

Macarons at Galeries Lafayette

My heart went 'ping!' today. I can't believe I've been here for 2 years and *not* visited Galeries Lafayette before now. It's not that I haven't been in the area; it's not that my loyalty to the lovely KaDeWe has prevented me from passing through a different store; it's just that about a decade ago I visited Galeries Lafayette in Paris and was a little underwhelmed. (Though I'm not sure why, probably my taste was just different)


Today though I had some time, and I thought 'why not?'. I was passing and I suddenly remembered a French guy in my German class saying that a lot of the French expats go there to buy really expensive yoghurt. What? Food hall? Expensive yoghurt? Why, doesn't that sound like it might be just like the KaDeWe?

Oh. My. God. It's lovely! It's smaller than the food hall in the KaDeWe, but it's beautifully, darkly lit, and it's like all the products you could ever need but in lovely French packaging! Oh to be a French expat with lots & lots of money! Not that they aren't catering for the Germans and the Brits. There are a selection of Cadbury's biscuits for the Brits and 5KG jars of Nutella for the Germans. (Why would you buy so much that you can barely lift it?). Oh and of course, the Americans haven't been forgotten: yup, they've shipped in more of that Fluff for you guys, ha, ha, ha! (scroll down for the photos)

Pretty cakes: I want to roll around in there with you with my mouth open.

I have very little use for these, but I just want to take them home, line them up and look at them anyway.

These can stay on the shelf though...

I want my peas to have a gold lid!

Beluga Linsen: One of life's essentials, surely???

I can't even imagine trying to explain to Stevie that I spent 40 euros on a tub of Nutella. 

Nuts: I've run out of photos.

You can find Galeries Lafayette at Friedrichstrasse 76-78 and online.

1000 steps... round the KaDeWe!

Main: The Princess & the Pea window display. Inserts: Outside the KaDeWe.  No matter the day there will always  be a crowd outside waiting to get in at 10am. 

It's Christmas time in the KaDeWe. Last week the windows were shrouded while the displays were perfected, but it didn't stop people trying to peek. The theme this year is 'fairytales', and it's been done beautifully. I couldn't wait to see the main foyer display. So I waited with the daily crowds (instead of going to the supermarket) and decided it would be the perfect time for another 1000 steps!

 30 steps... 

If you don't have a silver hand-held mirror that rests on a silver platter, then don't worry: they've got it! Christmas comes in all shades. These pale lilac baubles were rather lovely, though my camera hasn't quite captured their true colour.

Oh, and inside it's just lovely. The foyer is packed full of beautiful things. A zillion things that I wouldn't say no to. Admittedly, that would mean that my house would be chock-full of Christmas tree decorations and scented tealights, but I could be happy living like that. Especially those little tealights that smell like the essence of Christmas and come in the teensiest little ceramic casserole dish complete with lid. Oh, and they have a fine selection of festive fascinators - my favourite was a jaunty cup of tea with lovely ribbons, but I'm not sure if it would coordinate with my snowboots, so I've left it for now...

 50 steps... 

Main: birdcage and birdies, the tree of many baubles and Christmas products piled high. Inserts: Louis Vuitton boots, and the most gorgeously illustrated book of fairy tales. I esp. like the purple cover.

Enter into the world of eclectic prettiness. I have fallen for their gilt birdcages which are dotted around the outskirts of the foyer. They sit atop golden pillars, displaying little feathered or glass birds to clip on to the branches of your tree. Want, want, want...the whole lot. But the foyer complete with all it's overflowing displays is dominated by the KaDeWe's very own ginormous Christmas tree. It's the place to stop with your baby or your boyfriend and have your photo taken for your Christmas card, or more likely your FB profile pic.

 300 steps... 

For the girl who has nothing and wants everything: a crystal studded DeLonghi coffee machine; Red Westco scales: totally worth the money as turn them around and they're a CLOCK!; I do need a hole punch for Orla's school newsletters...

So I skipped the rest of the ground floor which is mainly populated with the cosmetics department and handbags. Which is nice and everything and there are probably more exclusive brands than you'd get in other department stores but really, most cosmetics departments have the same 'look' so I just bypassed it on my tour. The ground floor is also home to an outer perimeter walkway where there are lots of little individual stores. It's here that you can find Prada, Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Chanel, etc, and the lifts without a view. If you are in a rush, avoid the glass lifts in the central atrium, you'll be waiting forever.

I also skipped the 1st and 2nd floors. Menswear & Ladieswear. I couldn't be bothered and I thought I might run out of 'steps', so I went to the 3rd - home of bed & bath, childrenswear, hairdressing, and the creche of joy. But I haven't sorted my photos of it. I love the 3rd floor. I can never get tired of gasping at 50 euro Armani baby bottles, or choking over a completely plain tiny baby t-shirt that costs the same as a return flight to Scotland. And the creche, well I adore the creche and the 3 hours of FREE fun they allow me.

So onwards and upwards to the 4th floor - homewares. When I first arrived in Berlin my neighbour's famous words to me were "Buy your fruit, veg, fish, and meat from the market. For everything else there's the KaDeWe". As I couldn't find a single shop selling mops, I did what my neighbour said and went to the KaDeWe. Alas, while the KaDeWe have most things, they do not stock mops. Unless they are studded with diamonds...

 500 steps... 

They do have a 'My First Barbie' but I'd rather have one of these. Left to right: Van Gogh Barbie, Gustav Klimt Barbie, Sinatra Barbie, Elvis Barbie, Grace Kelly Barbie, and Farah Fawcett Barbie - all 50 Euros each - uh-huh-huh, ooohhh, yeah!

Next floor up and it's toys, stationary, books, and technology on the 5th. I love the toy department. It's not the best one I've ever been in, but it's nice. They have a great selection of Playmobil & Lego, and a lot of Steiff, and Haba, and their play food selection is to die for. Admittedly the play food is far more expensive than the real thing, but you are paying for cuteness, and eh..the creche staff wages.

Lego Santa is back in town; the glorious English-language section of Hugendubel in the KaDeWe; the big Steiff bear who costs more than your house is worth.

  600 steps...  

We're still on the 5th but we're round at the Hugendubel franchise. This is my usual first stop hangout when I drop the kids off at the creche. There is an English-language section - look that's it you can see right there! This is the place that is responsible for some of my stranger forays into literature. I just buy what they have that I haven't read. Especially as I haven't really been in the mood for crime since I got here, so I limit myself to 1 bookcase. But it's made me more experimental, and on top of that, there are seats where you can just sit and read as much of a book as you can in 3 hours and then put it back! Yay!

 800 steps... 

Hello! It's lucky you are protected by glass or I would throw myself at you.

 Just one floor up on the 6th is the KaDeWe food hall. It's great. You'd like it. I promise. It's everything you could ever want at a price you can barely afford! There are unusual, hard-to-get-hold-of things and there are everyday things. I like the bread counter and the cake counter with the lovely little petit fours - they do the tiniest little chocolate eclairs that are only about 3 cm long and a cm wide, they have the broadest range of loaves I have seen this side of the city all displayed beautifully. There are little restaurant stands dotted throughout the food department which are on the ok-side of a-bit-dear. Stevie and I have frequented the Chinese restaurant a couple of times where you can watch your food being prepared as well as watching the world go by and it seems pretty reasonably priced. Really I want to be one of the people hanging out in the Moet bar at 10:30am, having a little glass of champagne while I meet a client. Those are my kind of meetings! Behind the Moet bar you can find the fresh fish; fresh to the point that some of them are in tanks so you can point to the one you want. Around this part of the food hall there are oyster bars which are always busy. Ah, oysters and champagne, or even oysters and beer...if only I liked oysters!

You can buy tea from giant ceramic urns, and choose wurst and cold meats from a massive selection. There are walls of sauces and condiments, a whole section dedicated to different chocolate companies including Godiva. And of course there's the 'American section' which I adore. But you could do all your regular grocery shopping here too. There are fruit and veg sections (see below) which stock everything that you could hope for. I read on someone else's blog that they didn't think people actually shopped there, but that in order to be a proper food hall it was a requirement. I can confirm that I have seen on quite a few occasions people buying potatoes or apples or in fact a whole shopping list of perfect quality produce.

The KaDeWe food hall. This bit has the more exotic things like baby pineapples and plantains, but you could also buy just a regular apple, onion, or orange round the corner. 

 1000 steps... 

Part of the glass roof on a sunny, blue sky, November morning. The seasoning station where you can add herbs, oils, dressings, and spices to your lunch. Nice. Bottom: Dessert. Kids in the creche? Why, yes, I think I will have the strawberries!

From the 6th floor there is an escalator (or lift) which takes you up to the restaurant and bar on the 7th floor. (Just before you get on the escalator you should take a moment to admire the huge Brandenburg Gate which sits in a glass display cabinet. I never gave it too much examination before, but it turns out it's made of 50 kilos of marzipan and took 150 hours to make by hand)  In the restaurant the food is displayed no-less beautifully than you would expect. Everything looks totally delicious. You can buy salads and so on by weight, there is a lovely selection of cakes, always at least two soups, and a wide range of hot meals all freshly prepared. But it is quite dear. You can however get perfect strawberries and cream all year round - but let's just say, you'll pay for that pleasure.

The restaurant itself is set in the roof of the KaDeWe and has great views from the giant arched window which faces out on to Tauentzienstrasse and Wittenbergplatz. You can also see the Fernsehturm from here which is the only place round this end of town that I have actually seen it from. But mostly it's nice just sitting under the glass roof, with a beer, and a new book, and two kids having a great time in the creche 4 floors below. Aaahhh.....

More photos on my Flickr

Is that a Snickers zipping past? No, it's a Marathon.

Berlin Marathon 2011 - Paula Radcliffe. Seriously, how cool is that?

Berlin Rollerblading Marathon 2011

This weekend was Marathon weekend in Berlin. I never knew I liked marathons so much until I came here. No, scratch that, I never knew I liked spectating so much. Stevie asked whether I thought I could do a half marathon, to which I replied that I had my doubts as to whether I could run or rollerblade my way through a 1/26th marathon.

Anyway, having things like this going on in Berlin of a weekend make me glad to live here. I get that excited feeling of being in a place where there's just oodles of interesting things just around the corner. And in fact that's pretty much where they were. Last year I only discovered the rollerblading marathon because I needed to go to the supermarket and I couldn't get across the road. As it was pouring with rain, I gave up and just went home. But this year we've had fantastic weather for yesterdays' rollerblading and todays' 'proper' marathon.

I took my camera and walked a little bit along the rollerblading route and tried to capture the competitors against a bit of a Berlin backdrop. Unlike the east side of Berlin, it's a lot harder to find graffiti in the west. It also took me a while to jiggle about with my camera to get it to catch the competitors without them fuzzing into a speedy blur. But then later I realised I preferred them that way.

And then today we all went down the road to where the Ku'Damm meets Tauentzienstrasse at the Gedachtniskirche to watch the runners at the 35km mark. Last year we missed the lead runners, but holy smoke, we got to see them this time, and they are just SO fast! Unbelievably so. It's so impressive and certainly I never realised just how impressive they were whenever I had seen bits of the London Marathon on tv in years previous.

So it was great, there was a fantastic atmosphere and there were bands dotted all along the route. Where we were there was an excellent steel drum band, and just a little further down near Nike World there was a brass band squished in on the centre of the road crossing, playing contemporary music in between the pedestrian lights.

So I thoroughly enjoyed this weekend. My love for Berlin has gone up a notch, and look, LOOK! I even got a photo of Paula Radcliffe! Woo hoo!!! I'm dead chuffed.

The one where we're not on tv.

Nice fridge, but you can keep the rest of the crap...now show me something with a pool!

So last week I was approached to be on tv. Sadly not for my wit and depth of knowledge on the subject 'boys in tights', but for my other specialism: checking out houses. Specifically it was for us to appear on an American programme similar to 'Location, location, location', but with an expat twist. Part travel show, part aspirational house hunt. Totally up my street, in more ways than one.

In my quest to try something different this year, I was of the opinion that this would be loads of fun. I really enjoyed being shown round apartments when we first came here, and this struck me as even more fun as we didn't even have the pressure of actually having to find one to live in quite urgently.

The plan was they would film the show in reverse. They'd film us in our current apartment all settled and still no pictures hardly on the walls cause the walls are too big. And we'd be all cheery and happy because we'd be pretending that we'd just moved in and we wouldn't yet have discovered that the shower ran cold all the time and the dishwasher was leaving the dishes dirtier after washing them, and we wouldn't have experienced that awful winter where our 'heritage' windows practically fell apart and were draughty as hell and we wouldn't have known that our landlord was so rubbish with English that he thinks 'heritage' and 'total crap' mean the same thing.

Then the film company would have all our furniture removed and they'd film us viewing the apartment empty, and then they'd put everything back again, and then we'd go on to view another two apartments and all the little aspirational bits and bobs in-between: me aspirationally dumping the kids off in the creche in the KaDeWe and then nipping upstairs, buying a new book, racing up to the top floor bar to drink beer and read half my book before the creche calls me to remind me I have kids. Stevie being filmed in IKEA aspirationally being accused of shop-lifting, and then discovering that his aspirational girlfriend has cancelled his card thinking wrongly that her purse had been stolen. And of course all those little bits showing us enjoying the Berlin landmarks, where the digital editors would have to photoshop out the wet, stream-like marks on the Brandenburg Gate and Fernsehturm, Gedachtniskirche, and Check Point Charlie where Hamish would have taken aspirational pee-pees. Ah...living the dream!

But then 'the killjoy', previously known as Stevie, said that it was too much hassle, and couldn't see what was fun about having the house turned upside down and taking time off work to film for 3 days, and having to fly back to Scotland for a day with the kids, and...etc....etc.....just because I wanted to be on tv.

But I didn't want to be on tv, never have. That was the beauty of this! Nobody I knew would see it, so not only could I make a fool of myself, but I also wouldn't need to go on a sudden, extreme crash diet! It would just be good fun. But Stevie was dead against it, so that was the end of that. And uch well, I suppose there was no Phil and Kirstie...

The one where I deprive the neighbours of heat on the coldest day of the year

I believe we are known as 'the English' by some people in our building. In the same way our previous downstairs neighbours were called 'the Canadians'. It's not so much the name, and who cares about that anyway, cause as Scot's it's not our country that's getting derided. No, it's the tone it's said in. We might as well be 'the Gypsies' or 'the people who don't recycle correctly' - yes, it's that bad.

Our crime in earning this name, was that we complained about the appliances in the apartment to our landlord. I won't go into it. I probably already have many months ago. Anyway, our landlord went straight from our apartment to his best friend's upstairs, and presumably bad-mouthed us for his own failings. I'm not sure what the Canadians did to deserve, in actual fact, worse disdain from the neighbours. I think it might have something to do with wanting a satellite dish. Or maybe simply just having an apartment twice the size of everyone elses, when really as an old snob, you want to be the top dog in the 'Haus'. Certainly, they've never missed an opportunity to tell us that their apartment is bigger than ours because they gain about a square metre due to the position of the stairs.

Anyway, I shall get to my point on this in due course. What happened was that there was a letter posted on the inner door downstairs telling us that there was a leak in the cellar and on such and such a date we would all have to turn our heating off by 8am at the latest while it was repaired. As luck would have it, it was the day we were to experience some of the lowest temperatures this winter: -11 between 6am and 11am and then a slightly warmer -9 to -6 around lunchtime I think. I was dreading it and decided that if the apartment was freezing when I got back from German class and picking up the kids, then we would just go to the KaDeWe and take full advantage of their 3 hours of free, roasty-toasty childcare and expensive coffee.

But when we got back the flat seemed warm enough. Certainly warm enough for my two lovely children to strip off and run around naked as is their want most days. At the time we returned there was no notice up to say that we could put our heating back on, and as I didn't feel we needed it, I didn't even try.

Fast forward 8 hours. There's a banging on the door. The following conversation is very jaggily translated)

Neighbour who organised the repairs: "Are you ok? Are you ok?",

Me: "Sure, we're fine! Why, what's up?".

Neighbour: "None of the other neighbours have any heat. We can't work out the problem. Both the side houses have got heat back on, and have had heat all afternoon, but there is still a problem with our house, and many of the neighbours are worried because they are so cold. Do you have heat coming out of your radiators?"

Me: "...well, I haven't turned them back on yet."

Neighbour: "There was a notice downstairs to say that you must put your heating back on and turn all the radiators to 4".

It's not like I can say, "Ah, but I have 2 kids who won't wear clothes in the afternoon, and I'm not taking them up and down in the lift naked to check for notices".
So I said: "Oh". That seemed to cover it. There was no point in adding that Stevie can't read (and understand) German, so just doesn't even bother trying, so he wouldn't even have seen it when he got home from work.

So the neighbour demanded that we turn our radiators on to 4, and guess what, all of a sudden everyone elses heating came on too. I like to think that it was a coincidence (ha, ha, ha!), but I have the feeling that more of our neighbours will be referring to us as 'the English'. But at least we've proven what a hardy bunch we Scot's really are!!

To see oursels as ithers see us...

Just how is your homeland perceived in other countries? If you had to write a shopping list of foodstuffs that would neatly encapsulate the beloved traditional meals and the nations favourite foods, what would be on it. Chances are you don't see the 'typical' foods of your own country the same way as foreigners do.

The photos above show the American food section of the Ka De We. The Ka De We is essentially the Harrods of Berlin. I love the food department, it's full of interesting stuff at 500 times the normal price. A box of Weetabix for example will cost you in the region of £5. Not that it's that much cheaper in the other supermarkets.

Anyway, one of my particular favourite sections is the American section. It's like they just eat crap! There's not a vegetable in sight. The only fruit that's being boasted about is 'artificial'. Do American's only eat cakes that come from a box or bottle? Do they really have AA meetings for Jim Beam sauce addicts? And what are they doing with all that 'Fluff'? I mentioned the Strawberry Fluff to my American classmate, cause I wasn't sure what you would use it for. Apparently it can be used in sandwiches in conjunction with ...did she honestly say, peanut butter??? Or was it jelly (jam)? Either way, I'm feeling a little nauseous.

Sadly, my photos just miss out the Cheese Zip. I like the name, but the idea of something cheese-based, unrefrigerated, in a plastic bottle slightly turns my stomach. Something tells me it aint 'Bio'!

And if you Brits are sniggering up the back, believe me the British products aren't much better. I'll keep those for another time. Hold on to your Kettle Chips!

The moth effect

We found a moth in Hamish's wardrobe. Orla said we should "set it free using Daddy's shoe" , but I managed to blow on it several times and encourage it out of the window. Not before it had batted it's little wings and set off a chain of events that added up to one of my best days yet in Berlin.

The day started off uneventfully enough. Just the usual: kids going mental, me going spare, them not listening, me thinking I AM GOING TO LOSE MY MIND. So it was, that I decided to just get them out of the house before they knocked anything else over, broke bones, made their mother have them adopted. My thoughts turned to the play place at KaDeWe. A little creche of sorts where you can leave your children in their care for up to 3 hours for FREE as long as you don't leave the shop. They give you a nice mobile phone and promise to interrupt your calm-regaining browse, should anything happen.

So as I rushed to get us ready for this, I had all the usual interruptions to contend with along with a new one - Hamish's new love of brie. 3 minutes from departure I have them both fully covered in sun lotion. 1 minute from departure Orla knocks over a crate of our friends belongings "just because", which has been standing on top of 2 other crates. 30 seconds from departure Orla appears out of the naughty corner, naked. Race, race, race. We finally leave the house. Dor closed. Hamish requests more cheese. Flappetty, flappetty, go the wings of the moth. I realise I don't have my keys.

I go downstairs to get a signal on my phone and ask Stevie what time he'll be back from work. Of course this is the day he chose to take his bike instead of the car so he'll probably be later. Fair enough, I have my new bank card anyway, so I can go and get money out and we can just spend the afternoon somewhere. Flappetty, flappetty, go the wings of the moth. I turn to look at the kids who are in the sand pit. I let out a (possibly) external scream as I realise that the sun lotion has adhered them with a good even coating of sand. I try a wipe on a leg. Much squealing and also I don't have the lotion out with me to reapply so I give up and hope that it will fall off of its own accord before we get to KaDeWe and they will accept my grotty children.

First the bank. I got one card, two pin numbers. I figured that I would go into the bank and ask them about this. But of course the moth has flapped it's wings and the bank is already closed for the weekend. Never mind. I figure the latest pin number they have sent me will be the most likely correct one. Flappetty, flappetty, I put the card in, look for the (no) option for English language, and put the pin number in. End of transaction is what I guess it tells me. Either way my card has been swallowed. Not even a chance to try the other pin. I am close to tears. I phone Stevie. He offers these words of comfort - "Didn't you see the option for English?"

I have a few Euros, but I am going to have to be careful not to spend them too frivolously because I might have to wander around Berlin for quite a few hours before Stevie comes back with the keys. But wait, I'm forgetting! I have KaDeWe! I take the kids up, and it's different people from the last time I used it and they want either my passport (which I didn't bring) or my bank card for ID. Oh, that old thing. Well...

So once again, I have to present my Berlin Zoo Card as my only form of ID, and once again it is accepted, though grudgingly. I explain that Orla might ask to go for a "wee wee" and I show Orla the toilets so she knows where to go this time without them having to phone me. I take myself off to the 6th floor to check out the food and start to relax. Then the phone rings. I hear a babble of German. To my ear it sounds fast and a little frantic, and I say "Ein minuten! Ich komme!!". I race down the escalators and get there in under a minute. Orla has done a wee wee, and they explain has managed to do it all the way from the front of the creche through to the toilet area. I find her sat on a toilet looking quite happy. "The wee-wee just came". Fair enough. These things happen. But how am I going to spend an afternoon in Berlin with a child who is naked from the waist down and definetly doesn't have lotion on her bum?

I haven't got enough money to buy her anything from KaDeWe, but still they come to my rescue. They give me a loan of a pair of trousers in exchange for 5 euros. My cash is depleting. I am thankful that I didn't have time for a drink. It seems that it is time to leave the KaDeWe. Stevie phones. I am going to leave early so I can get back to help you. GREAT!!!!

Of course this is the day he decides it would be best to see what it's like getting the train back with his bike. Do I need to tell you that it takes longer? He phones as I am feeling a little better. I have found the Hugendubbel (like Waterstones) that I have been wanting to go to, and have found that they also have a great English book section and an English book group that meets once a month. I am going to go to that I decide. Stevie phones again. He is back and has checked the mailbox and there is a new bankcard for me. He will walk down to meet me with it and we will try it together. I tell him I will walk up to meet him as I have nothing better to do. I walk and walk and I am nearly home, literally round the corner from the apartment when he appears. I have dark, secret thoughts that he has probably been having a nice lie down with a cold coke, in a flat that he has keys for. He hands me my keys and we head back to the Ku'Damm and the bank. We try my card and my second pin and this time I get money. But there is no option for English. Stevie is adamant that I have got it wrong and tries his card. Same, but I was half expecting his card to get eaten. It was that sort of day, but it didn't.

The kids are getting fractious and feel they have been out for far too long. We race home and Stevie notices that they are both coated in sand and starving. Up in the lift he starts getting frantic as the noise coming from the kids is getting increasingly loud, whiney, and annoying. Just get the door opened and get them straight into the bathroom, he demands. Right, right! It's funny. He always thinks that it's incredulous that I should get frustrated and annoyed by the kids when I have them all day every day and usually through the night, yet it's perfectly normal for him to be the same after just an hour in their company. I open the door, hustle them in, run a bath, strip them off, get them cleaned and make the dinner. Then ready for bed and then I can relax and moan to my mum about my horrible day on the phone.

Saturday comes. It takes us most of the morning to get ourselves organised enough to go out. Stevie starts making a song and dance about me making sure I have everything. Do you have your keys? Actually, as it happens, I can't find them. Flappetty, flappetty, Stevie opens the front door while I am frantically searching the flat. There's a clink as he does so: I had left my keys in the lock on the outside of the door.

We found another moth in the bathroom on Sunday. This time we helped it with Daddy's shoe.

Hair-do Hotspot

One of the cheapest things you can get in Berlin is a haircut. It's massively cheap compared to the UK. I read in one of our guidebooks that a haircut in Tony & Guy here would cost only 19 Euros compared to around £40 in the UK. A cut in Vidal Sassoon is only 49 Euros and as the guide book says "they maintain the same high standards as they do worldwide".

I had been a bit apprehensive about German haircuts before I came here. The last time I got my haircut before I came here the stylist said that one of her clients comes back to Derby to get her hair done because she doesn't like German hairdressers. That's a pretty expensive cut, and I would never have thought of Derby as the hair hotspot of Europe.

But when I read the bit on pricing in the guidebook, well hey, I'm willing to try anyone if they're offering reasonably priced highlights. Of course though, I'm not daft, I've done my German hairdressing experimentation with the kids first! Actually, Hamish was in dire need of a trim and was looking a bit mullet-y (and altogether fitting in far too well) and I'd already bribed Orla with Smarties to let me trim her fringe.

We just happened to be in KaDeWe having a look round when we came across the childrens' hairdressers on the 3rd floor. It's great! It's just like the place I took them to in Derby where they can sit on motorbikes and watch cartoons, except this place doesn't have the strange Johnny Depp weirdo doing the hair. I think it suffers just a little because of that. Anyway, I managed to book them in and although they had a joint appointment, Hamish managed to fall asleep just in time, so we re-booked him in for yesterday.

As usual my extensive high school German enabled me to ask for precisely what I wanted - listen to this: "A la Amelie, ein Filme mit Audrey Tatou, ja?". In case you're in any doubt, this was for Orla. I think that it covers it nicely. Or it would have if any of the hairdressers had seen the film or knew the actress. So I gestured with my hands sweeping, sharp, lines.

I was more than a little worried that I didn't have any male actors in mind for Hamish's cut. I also don't like boys haircuts that are just shaved all over. Somehow, quite how, I'm not sure, I managed to get what I wanted across, and I think both cuts worked out really well. Now if only they could do my highlights....