Recommendations for those with a fear of loneliness

I'm practising at having claustrophobia. Unintentionally. And I'm starting to feel like I am getting quite good at it. Today we went to Stadtbad Schoeneberg, my all-time favourite indoor swimming pool, except that today I hated it. HATED it! Now admittedly I made a mistake in writing in my blog about what a wondrous place it is, cause now you meet folk in there that YOU KNOW! I like an empty pool. A pool that nobody else goes to. I'm ideally a villa with a private pool on holiday kind of girl. Stevie is my polar opposite and only enjoys pools that are busy. Anyway, Stadtbad Schoeneberg is closing for a couple of months as of tomorrow I think (which seems mad as it's the middle of the summer holidays for the German schools), so obviously EVERYBODY decided to go and make the most of it today. It was standing room only. Literally. Downstairs there was no room to even tread water, not that it stopped crazy nutters from doing handstands practically on top of people, or an old man from doing a really creepy floating thing where he was floating face down looking to all intents and purposes like he'd died. I pressed myself further into the side of the pool to avoid him touching me as he drifted past. The only thing that stopped me from alerting the lifeguard to the possible corpse, was the comfort of having 2 people snogging ultra passionately 2 inches from my cheek.

Outdoors is fine: especially if you want a Russian hat.

Giant star-shaped panic button for the claustrophobic.

Last week I went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum or Mauermuseum on Friedrichstrasse. It's one of the places I've been planning on visiting for ages. The weather was a bit of a mixed bag; a little bit sunny, a little bit humid and dying to thunder. Anyway, the street was chock-a-block as usual with tourists, but I hadn't expected the museum to be *just as packed*! It was hideous. The museum itself is fine, great even, - though there's a lot of reading, but it was oppressively hot with so many bodies tightly packed in, squeezing past each other, ad there wasn't any air conditioning. Had I not paid Euros 12.50 to get in, I would have chucked it just to get some fresh air and some space. Instead I squeezed my way around with the rest of them, skim-reading a lot of stuff, bypassing an awful lot more, until I felt like I had got a reasonable amount for my money. Maybe it was just the time of year that made it *so* busy in combination with the weather, who knows, but I wouldn't be jumping at the opportunity to go back.

Deep end boys and west end girls

Uch you know, just a wee young thing I picked up after my new hairdo.

If you listen to a lot of the young 'un's over in the Eastern parts of this city, you'll hear a load of crap. The West is boring; nothing happens there; it's not cool; blah, blah, blah. And, it's not true. Well it's not all true. Admittedly, we enjoy a somewhat more sedate pace of life compared to Warschauerstrasse on a Thursday night, but that's only because we're all indoors smoothing the pelt on our mink coats with our daughter's Barbie hairbrushes. Come the weekend, we're ready to party.

As if further evidence were required to prove how awesome the west side of Berlin is, I took my camera with me today to my new not-quite-favourite-but-heck-I-used-to-hate-these-places-place, Stadtbad Schoeneberg. In other words: a swimming pool. I know. If you ever read this post, or it's friend, this post, you'll realise just how great this place is for me to actually like it. But wait for this: I even went there today on my own account. NO FORCING REQUIRED!

So why the sudden change of heart? Well, for starters, it's clean! Bowl me over with a verruca sock! The changing rooms are clean and pleasant. You have to take your shoes and socks off in a little room before you go through to the changing rooms which eliminates that skanky, mucky wet that you normally find in changing rooms. The changing rooms are a vision of modern frosted glass and large slate tiles. And for the delight of youngsters, inside the cubicles there is a release handle which opens the doors on either side of the cubicle revealing their mother's semi-nude shouting body. (Of course, if I was German, I'd be mingling in the shared changing room, but I would struggle to gag Hamish's loud observations on other people's bodyparts while nonchalantly uncovering mine). 

Anyway, on to the pool. In the kids area, which you can see below in a photo I grabbed off the Tagesspiegel, you have a bunch of pools. Off to the far left (out of frame) there are loungers beside a very shallow pool for tiny people. When I was there with Stevie, he loved this pool, which he described as being "as cosy as warm piss". Which given the average age of the clientele in that particular part of the building, it probably was.

Beside, and the main pool below, you have a kind of jacuzzi section going on bottom left, a slide, one of those fountain things, and if you go under the bridge, you can go outside to a LAZY RIVER!! Seriously. I was sold at the cleanliness, but I fell in love with the lazy river. Back indoors, there's also a flume. Notoriously quick to crap myself at the sight of these sorts of things, I must of been in a shocked-by-wonderment-daze, because even I went on it....more than once.

Photo from Der Tagesspiegel copyright: Kitty Kleist Heinrich

There is also a proper grown-ups pool with diving boards in a separate area, and even it has a pool to the side of it for non-swimmers. This is the pool that features in my photo at the top, because way down at the deep end there's a window where underwater swimmers can wave out at the voyeurs with kids and cameras in the reception area, or alternatively the unsuspecting can get an eyeful of folk's bums and wobbly thighs trembling through the water. Like I say, AWESOME!

Anyway, I like this place, so if at all possible if you're in the area and fancy a swim, could you go somewhere a little further east? It's really cool over that side of the city, and all the floating plasters feature post-modern grafitti for the delight of local hipsters and tourists alike. Promise.

http://www.berlinerbaederbetriebe.de/105.html

Under a bush, down memory lane

When I was in primary school there was a boy in my class who ran away from home and hid and slept in a bush for two days before being discovered. As I recall, nobody seemed particularly concerned (well, we were only about 6 or 7 at the time), and it just seemed the kind of thing that he would do, and I suppose I just thought he'd be back at school within a few days. And he was. The thing about this boy was that he was a little bit of an oddball. A bit of a loner, a bit of a loser, didn't really talk much, oh, and often turned up to school wearing his pyjamas under his uniform. That's the bit that sticks in my head, and that's why I can totally recall this boy and his name and where he lived and what he looked like. Unlike most of the people I went to primary school with, I would probably recognise this guy if I saw him in the street.

Without ever having consciously thought it, I suppose I have always wanted to make sure I never had a kid like this boy. I have no idea what his home life was like, I just assumed it was the same as mine. Normal. But who knows. I wouldn't have known at that age what might have been going on at home, and maybe things can't be ok if you feel the need to go and hide in a bush for a couple of days. I've been thinking about this boy a bit and wondering what he's doing now. (He's not on FB so maybe he's got more of a life than me).

Yesterday Orla came home from school missing her school sweatshirt which I discovered was in with all her soaking wet swimming things. According to her, her teacher told her to put it in there. Not anything at all to do with the fact that she hates wearing it because it's too big. Anyway, peeking out at the top of her polo shirt I caught sight of a pink t-shirt. My automatic reaction was to assume that we must be into 'hinting season': where teachers and Kita careworkers drop subtle hints to me to tell me that my kids aren't wearing anywhere near enough clothes. 'Bugger!' I thought. Is it that time already?

On closer inspection, it became apparent that it wasn't the teacher dropping hints, but in actual fact her father quite possibly being asleep when he started dressing her. For Orla was wearing her Minnie Mouse pyjama top underneath her school uniform. Oh the shame!! It wouldn't have been quite so bad except that she'd had swimming so there was definitely someone who saw it, but most often it's not the actual class teacher that takes them to the swimming pool. So to top it off Orla decided that she would like to show her teacher her Disney Princess knickers (as you do) so I can be pretty certain that she saw her pyjamas too. Oh, the double shame! Eek! Incidentally, her teacher said 'Nice...'. Though I would have thought a 'Wow! Cool! I've got those too! Gleiche!' would have been more appropriate.

And now I am wondering whether the boy in my class who sometimes wore his pyjamas under his uniform maybe just had to dress himself or had a really tired father.

holidays for the pale & interesting

And so we're back! We had a lovely holiday firstly going back to Scotland, then England, and then Spain. And now, we're shattered and could do with a holiday. The first thing I noticed when we got to Scotland was that it was such a relief to not have to translate everything. Oh the ease of being able to read signposts and posters saying "Want to earn £500 per week in your spare time?". And so I read, and read, and read everything from the backs of cereal packets to, whisper it very quietly... The Daily Record (god knows it comes far lower down the literary scale than cereal packets). We need never talk of this again.

The other big thing for me was that I hastily took myself off to a supermarket (not straight away you understand. I know I sounded desperate but I think I waited a day) and rather than going "Wow!" and crying tears of joy as I had expected I might (remember the crazy way I acted when Stevie went back to Derby?), I was just indifferent. It was just, well... normal. On my second visit to a supermarket where I went to just pick up a few things to send back to myself via Parcels Please (only £11.75 to send 30 kg to Europe!) I did manage to spend £100 in about 10 minutes. I was in a rush as I needed to drive back to Stevie's parents house so it was a bit like a mini trolley dash, and now I can hardly remember what I actually bought. I do remember though that I did manage to buy 'Nigella Express' which should give me a few quick recipes and get me out of the pork ditch that we've been stuck in.

The kids loved seeing all their cousins, and by the end of our 4 days in Scotland we realised that we really could have done with more time there. The weather was also pretty great which made Stevie happy, as normally he likes to have a good moan about the wind, rain, temperature difference that we normally find in Scotland.

We then had a day and a half in Derby staying with my friends, and the kids loved being back and playing with their friends. So much that they didn't want to leave and spent much of the time in Spain saying they wanted to go back. I really enjoyed seeing my friends, and I do thoroughly miss them, but I don't miss living in Derby at all. We drove past our house and I didn't feel in the slightest sad that I wasn't living there anymore, which I thought I would. Stevie on the other hand got angry about the fact that the tenants aren't weeding our newly block-paved driveway. I suspect they care about that as much as I did. I have resigned myself to expecting the house to be a mess when we finally return to it, and am at least pleased that we didn't rent it out with our furniture getting trashed as well.

We had a great time in Spain, and the kids loved being in the pool and at the beach every day. I managed to get a wee bit of a tan, which if you've seen how pale I am is quite remarkable. Stevie managed to get food poisoning on about the second day and never really recovered from it until they day we left.

Last night Orla couldn't get to sleep and I lay in bed with her and told her just to close her eyes and think of nice things. I asked her what she was thinking of and she said "Cake", and I said, "Well, ok, but why not think of all the nice things you did on holiday?" and went on to list them for her. A minute later I asked her what her favourite bit of the holiday had been, thinking it might be playing with her cousins, or going to Vincent's, or even swimming on her own with her rubber ring for the first time. Her response: "Eating crisps". Next year we are holidaying in Tesco.

Fun times at the Baltic Sea (Warning: It's a poo story)

We went to the Baltic coast yesterday. It's not a place that I would ever have thought of going; it doesn't conjure up great images in my mind. Given the name, I think it's going to be pretty cold, and possibly a bit grey and murky. But, having been, I can say it's lovely and almost worth the 4.5 hour drive it took to get there. It should have only taken 2 and a bit but the German's believe in doing proper roadworks. They don't just dig up a small section at a time and work on that, they take the whole road away and start again. I bet it takes less time that way, but it's not great if you're trying to travel.

Anyway, if you get the chance to visit it, it's really pretty. We went to Warnemunde (which should have an umlaut in it, but who knows where that kind of punctuation is on this keyboard). The sea was shallow and a reasonable 20 degrees, though Hamish continously yelled "I don't like this swimming pool!" but he did enjoy the sand which was a lovely light golden colour and only contained a spattering of cigarette butts which, (given our limited experience) seems quite unusual for Germany.

Hamish managed to make the day more interesting by doing a jobby (that'll be a 'poo' for English speakers) inside his all-in-one swim/sun protection suit. My brain wasn't working properly after my long drive, and I couldn't think how I should resolve the situation on the beach with 2 toddlers and an audience of thousands without leaving all our belongings unattended including my precious camera, so I called Stevie in out of the water where he was having a swim and let him resolve it with his, ...eh... hand. It was so utterly disgusting, my sides ached from laughing.

This demonstrates the difference between my beloved and me. I would have dragged Hamish up and down the beach hunting for a toilet, all the time worrying that it would be giving him a sore bum (and it seemed the closest toilets were in the town), or have tried to think of an ingenious solution whereby I would have wrapped my hands in wipes and (oh this isn't painting a good picture, is it? I hope you're not eating your dinner). Stevie's brain, on the other hand, thinks in simple terms - Retrieve, remove, what with? Ah, hand. there is no messing about in Stevie-land. Though my brain, even if it thought along similar lines to Stevie's would have taken it down the leg (the suit stopped at the knee and as Hamish doesn't have particularly long legs, it's not so much of a distance). But, to reach down the back of his NECK?????

My birthday

It's my birthday. I got a teensy lie in after being out last night with my friends. Teensy, as Stevie my beloved had said 'Drink as much as you like and stay out as late as you want, because I won't play football so you can lie in and get a good sleep.' Then this morning 'Oh, the football manager called me last night and they really need me so I'm off to play football. You better get up.'

The morning passed in a sleepy, mildly hungover blur. We played in the garden, and I got to play with my new camera. The kids played on the trampoline and wanted in and out of it like yo-yo's and every time they got out I got a massive electric shock off of each of them. I'm starting to go right off that trampoline. I don't remember it ever producing so much static.

We rounded off the day by having a wee jig to some nice ceilidh music. The kids loved it! And now I think I shall rest.

Plaster-infested waters: part two

This is not the pool. If it were this nice I might not be moaning as much. Though I still think it's probably not that clean.

I am being punished for eating the kids chocolate buttons. Orla chose swimming again today. All went well despite even more grotesque fungal images flying round my mind this time round. But hurried through the first changing room experience as quickly as possible, and got in to the nice(r) warmer (pee temperature?) pool and had barely set a foot in the grime infested waters before we were told we had to leave in 10 minutes. You'd think they could have told us that at the front desk when we paid our £5.00, but admittedly they were a bit distracted by the lady who quite rightly was having a good shout at them for their incompetence*.

Our 10 minutes pass in a blur, and then we're kicked out into the teenage pool. We managed somewhere between 5 - 10 minutes before the children's chittering gets in the way of their fun and even they want to leave. I wouldn't be me if I wasn't just a little bit pleased to be getting out. So back in the horrid changing rooms, I open the locker and give Orla the £1 to hold (just in case I need to divert her attention away from having a massive tantrum because she's been short-changed on swimming fun). But it appears that a short stint in freezing cold water is enough to entice her back into her clothes. So I am relaxed and happy as we get changed. Last time I think I might have forgotten to mention that she had a massive tantrum in the little cubicle, which was nice, and simply added to my pleasurable experience.

This time round aside from chanting "cold, cold, cold", she was a very good girl and mostly kept quiet. She had been playing with the £1 coin running it up and down the filthy grout; digging it into the dirty, fungal, grooves in the wooden slatted bench; dropping it on to the musty, just plain filthy floor; oh, and then popping it in and out of her mouth and licking it.


I just deserve this, don't I?

I don't want a pool party for my birthday

Are we having fun yet?

I hate swimming. I have never liked it and whenever Stevie suggests it my heart sinks like a brick to the bottom of the pool. You don't even get to wear your pyjamas which would make it slightly more palatable. I had heard Stevie murmering about it this morning and tried mentioning "baby animals" to Orla to try and steer the day in a different direction. No success. So today we went swimming.

5 things I hate about the swimming baths:

1. I hate the filthy floors and the mixture of shoe dirt with pool water and general grot in the changing rooms.

2. I hate the plasters that have fallen off people that they put on the edge of the pool. I sat Hamish on the edge to splash in and inadvertantly he was right next to one and it made me want to throw up.

3. I hate the cold, cold, water - why can't it be like a really warm bath?

4. I hate getting splashed in the eyes cause I've forgotten my goggles (cause I hate water in my eyes anyway). Oh, and I'm going to sound like my mother here and I don't care, but the water is probably about 40% pee anyway.

5. I hate having to make a return visit to those filthy changing rooms. They make me want to wear verruca socks in case I catch something off the floor.

Orla and I went into the wrong pool to begin with. I thought Hamish must be having a meltdown squeezing into a super-tiny swim nappy and last summer's swimming shorts, but i hadn't figured that he and his daddy were in another pool. So me and Orla hung out with the teenagers doing handstands 3" away from us and and splashing us with pee water while we admired their belly button piercings while wondering 'who does that to 13 year olds?'. And then we spotted the baby pool through the glass!

Not quite as warm as a hydrotherapy pool (the only pool I have loved was at the hospital after I did my cruciate ligament in), but really quite nice. Well, temperature-wise anyway. I think I should switch off my brain and stop thinking about things too much and maybe I might enjoy it more. But anyway, once I sat Hamish next to the discarded plaster, my brain started thinking about how much pee would be in this Under 5's pool - I'm thinking more because there's less water and hey, babies just can't keep it in, and by the look of some of the daddies, I bet they weren't either. See, this is why I don't like it. My thoughts get carried away. Enough!

We are planning on going to the beach sometime soon. I used to live less than a mile from a beach. My views on beaches are somewhat similar to those of swimming pools, except you are fortunate not to get the luxury of the filthy changing rooms. The downside is that you are 100% more likely to find things a hundred times worse than a discarded plaster. Can't wait. Hamish is just at the right age to pick these things up and chew them.