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....

An hour in the company of feral children

Did I ever tell you about the time we gave in to Orla's begging at Center Parcs and spent £25 on a game of bowling which they wanted to do for all of about a minute? Well, we succumbed to the endless requests to go in a boat trip up the river Spree. So we paid the money and off we went and within oh, maybe 2 minutes it was like having two wild animals with us that we were desperately trying to make sit in seats and stop drowning out the audio guide for everyone. We made it through the hour-long trip, but it felt a bit like the 3 hour trip that we initially considered going on. I think I would have ended up making a swim for it.

Far more successful was our trip to the East Side Gallery, which is a stretch of Berlin Wall that has been kept and various artists were commissioned in 1989 to paint murals on it. Over the years other people added additional graffitti and the artists were asked back recently to re-paint their murals. The kids loved it, and just across the road the annual sand castle competition (it's probably called something fancier than a sandcastle competition) was taking place. We didn't pay to go in, as we planned on going back another time, but I did poke my camera through the fence. And the kids enjoyed getting lifted up on our shoulders for a look. So it's true, sometimes the best things in life actually are free!

checking for a dialling tone

At last, we have a phone line. as promised for the 7th of July. I expected it to be ready for use come the stroke of midnight, so you can imagine my heart dipping every 20 minutes when I would check it, and check it again. Turns out a man has to come round and poke around with the sockets. But at least they sent an attractive man. If only I had a little more skill with the language here, I could have asked him to sort out the broadband.

So I was quite excited to finally have a landline, and the second he was out the door I was dialling. Of course, nobody was home.

Out and about in the DDR

"Where do you think they keep the sharp knives?"

In the 3 minutes of internet access I seem to be able to get per day, I thought I'd use it wisely on my blog rather than frittering it away reading rubbish on Facebook. It was Hamish's birthday the other day and we had a weekend of doing all the things that Hamish likes to do. So we visited SeaWorld which they loved and the big 50 ft circular tank with the lift that goes up the middle is great, but overall we think the SeaWorld in Birmingham tops it just a little bit. But the kids loved it and we bought the joint tickets which will get us into Legoland, which we'll maybe go to next weekend.

Yesterday was absolutely roasting, so in between stops for ice-cream (Hamish likes the cone, and tries to eat that before the ice-cream), we yielded to the requests for baby animals and went to the zoo (again. I think this might be my fourth time, in which case my annual pass has paid for itself). Anyway, I was so busy saying to Stevie, "Have you got your zoo card? Have you got your wallet?" Etc, etc that I didn't even bother to think about whether I had mine. So we walked there and then we went back home on the U-Bahn and I raced back to get my card. Thankfully we only live a little way away from the zoo so it reduced Stevie's moan level to 'minimum'.

Later we were sat in a cafe in the shade with both kids sleeping in the Phil & Ted's (what's that? Maybe only the 5th time they've both napped at the same time?) and Stevie said that he doesn't know what he'll do in the winter-time when there are less outdoor things to do. I suggested that we could perhaps visit the hundreds of museums that there seem to be. He said that he doesn't want to visit any of the concentration camps or visit any of the museums that are related to the war. Which effectively rules out probably about 50% of them. He just doesn't want to know about all the terrible things that happened here.

2 days ago we passed the station where there is a monument to all the children who got sent to Britain during the war and to those who got sent to the concentration camps. They all left from Friedrichstrasse Station. There were photographs documenting both the children who left for Britain and those who survived the concentration camps. Orla was quite interested in looking, but it made Stevie feel very uncomfortable.

What he is interested in is the DDR era and is keen to visit the DDR museum. I went with the kids in the first couple of weeks we were here as I'd read about it and really fancied it. It's excellent. It's down by the Berliner Dom on the River Spree in Mitte. It's quite small, but they've crammed it full of interesting stuff. When I went in, the man working there asked why I was bothering to bring the kids as they wouldn't enjoy it, but in fact they had a great time. It's very interactive. There is a Trabi that you can sit in and pretend to drive; a reconstruction of a DDR house complete with bathroom, kitchen, and living room, and the rest of the exhibits are all accessible and can be touched and used, or are in little drawers or cupboards. We spent quite a while there and I would definetly go back again with friends and family who come over. The kids particularly liked the living room and the Trabi. Maybe next we'll go to the DDR transport museum.

Choices, choices, everywhere, and not a Cheerio in sight.

So, I suppose I could now call myself an 'Expat'. Without looking it up in the dictionary I suppose the definition is 'someone who leaves their home country and moves abroad to live.' However, I think more accurately it might be 'someone who moves abroad and on discovery of products (any) from their home country whoops with glee (inwardly)'.

I am intrigued by the whole consumerism thing I've decided. It came as a shock to me how little the german supermarkets had changed in 30 years compared (probably) to how much ours have grown and expanded in terms of choice. When I was looking for pasta sauce in a jar, I was, I'll admit a little horrified that there was little choice beyond choosing between one with basil, the bolognese one that actually includes meat (! that just seems wrong to me when it's not refrigerated) and another one that I didn't recognise. When I'm in the UK why, we literally have shelves, if not a whole half aisle or more of choice. There are probably a dozen different brands and these days even the supermarkets own brand is usually 3 brands where you have a premium version, a budget version, and a something in the middle version for those who are not feeling extravagant or miserly. But why do we need so much choice? I'll admit I am a bit brand loyal in my pasta sauce choices, but sometimes I do think 'mmm.. actually I might go for that one cause I fancy something that is a bit more basil-ly/ garlic-y/ etc'. But more often than not I either stick to the ones I always go for or go with what's on a special offer. But despite this, I am still a bit shocked not to have the choice at all. I'm beginning to suspect that I might actually be expected to make the stuff myself in order to tailor the basil/garlic/etc ratio to my requirements. I mean good lord, I've come here to cook? Not just stir?????

It's not just the pasta sauce section that suffers from such limited choice. Take bin bags. First off I struggled to find them. Initially I put it down to the fact that they do a lot of recycling here, so maybe they just don't have as much stuff that just has to go in the normal bin as we do. But then, I noticed that there are lots of places that sell bins, indeed I have spied quite a lot of very attractive, brightly coloured bins that take my fancy, but I've just not been able to find the bin bags. So then I discovered a shop that sells bin bags. One kind. I don't even know what kind they are yet, but I just bought them anyway, so pleased was I to have just found some. Maybe you don't spend too much time thinking about bin bags, but I seem to have tried nearly every kind you can get. In my not so big Tesco where I used to live we had a bother with their standard 'tie-top' bags in that they were too thin and would rip every time we took them out of the bin full. I also tried their standard 'drawstring' top ones and didn't like those either. Then of course their are the ones for all the different types/sizes of bins, the recycled ones, and our favourite, the somewhat sturdier 'heavy duty' bin bags. Occasionally I would forget this was the one I was after, and would purchase the 'garden' ones, or even sometimes the 'rubble' sacks. When they are all black(or sometimes green, or white), and the Tesco labelling not really that different between them apart from the name it's hard to tell, and you can't really unroll them and hold them up to the light to see how thick they are like a pair of 40 denier tights.

I've talked to Stevie about this whole choice thing. He is not really the ideal person to talk to about this as he is perfectly suited to the way of life here and I think is somewhat odd in that he has very little brand loyalty to him. "Oh, I just need shaving foam. Anything will do.", but he does understand that he lives with a person that spends a couple of minutes examining bananas before making a final choice because of their need to have them perfect. This often means we have no bananas or very expensive bananas. Now we just have bananas - with marks, bruises, and other bits and bobs that I don't like, but I'm still working on the German that will allow me to say "Hold on Mr Stallholder, let me have a look at those ones 3rd row from the back, 5 bunches in....nah, they have a black ridge on them. Wait, what about the ones 2 down from them and 4th in from the right? mmm...maybe not, they have too many dots, but keep them aside just in case they're the best you have". No here, I ask for bananas, he picks them up, and I just have to say 'Great, thanks'. Ha, ha, ha, I know, I probably sound mental being so pernickety about bananas, but it's just one of the many things that make me the lovely person I am. Oh, woe is me on the banana front....

Stevie thinks the way it is here is right. That we don't need endless choice, that life is simpler here, and maybe they've got their priorities right; that instead of wasting time weighing up which cornflake might taste better, they just buy THE cornflake, and stop thinking about consumer products the whole time. But me, I always quite liked that about food shopping. I'd get a little 'ooh!' of excitement when I'd see that there was a new brand of yoghurt, or that a brand I was already familiar with had now branched out into a slightly different area with a couple of new products. Have you seen the new Cadbury's chocolate cheesecakes and things? That was the last one that made me go 'ooh!'.

So here I am, where the only area of massive choice seems to be in Paprika crisp world. Why? Why? Why? I treid a different supermarket yesterday, called 'Neu und Gut'. I didn't hold out much hope for it. It had all the glamour from the outside of a pop-up flea market shop. The doors looked rickety, you could see toilet roll just piled up in the window in a scabby manner, but in we went. And I kind of fell in love with it a little bit. They had some British goods. A whole display stand of 'boxed' McVities Digestives, Milk Chocolate Digestives, and Hob Nobs. I stood in front of it and more than likely chuckled out loud. I bought some digestives and some milk chocolate digestives. I'm not that fond of digestives, but the kids might like them, and I would rather have had plain chocolate digestives than milk, but I was not leaving that shop without them. God knows, they probably cost me about 16 Euros, who knows, but what price is a little taste of home?

God bless the Canadians

There's none of your fancy anti-bacterial hand sanitising hand gel at frequent stop-off points here. They make you lick your fingers once you've touched a penguin.

So, we're half way through our first week in the new flat. I thought I liked it, but now as of tonight, I love it. I have met quite a few of my neighbours over the past few days, and they are all pretty friendly. One is taking me to the market tomorrow morning at 8:15 (she expects that I will be up anyway with the kids. I didn't tell her that they keep me so occupied with their incessant demands that I generally can't get out before 10:30.). I may have to go in my pyjamas...

We have been invited to meet a selection of neighbours for tea and coffee on Sunday which I am really looking forward to. I plan on quizzing them on all sorts of topics, and it'll be a relief to have a conversation with someone who speaks good english rather than attempting to have conversations with my poor German. We had thought that there were quite a few British people in the building (or 'the house' as they call it). There is an element of snobbery here too that I have picked up, There is the 'Vorderhaus' which is the front building and then there are side houses which you access via the main front door. Ours, the Vorderhaus, has double security, an extra set of locked doors, and that seems to be what sets us a little peg above our scabby side-house neighbours.

My neighbour upstairs that is taking me to the market talked about the others in the house as though everyone is a Diplomat. Whether they are or not I am not sure yet. But I guess we'll find out on Sunday. Our landlord is the German Ambassador for (well I won't tell you, or you'll Google him and then find his German address and all of a sudden I'll have all 15 of you on my doorstep looking for some Bratwurst and Robinson's Finest Apple & Blackcurrant).

Anyway, I just headed out to get some milk and I met my downstairs neighbours. They are Canadian and they were really nice. I could get to like them a lot and already I am sad that they are leaving in September. They were really friendly and gave me lots of top tips on where to locate things locally, and when I commented on their fine Kettle Chips (SALT & VINEGAR!!!!!) they gave me one of their bags as a housewarming gift. Then they went on to give me their details for their hidden broadband network, and I swear, my happiness levels hit the roof. So I sped throught the streets to get the milk while chanting their network name and password to myself until I got home and here I am! Lovely, lovely, internet access.

So as for the apartment itself, well it's great though Stevie has complained that it is "too big". I don't believe that it could ever be too big: I just haven't bought enough stuff yet. Stevie has always wanted to live life as a minimalist, and now that he has this feeling of empty space, he doesn't like it. Maybe he has gradually become a clutter-lover over the years of me quietly, furtively furnishing houses piece by piece with things he 'might not notice if I don't say anything'.

Anyway, the removal men decided they would finish on Tuesday without doing any unpacking. They were German and spoke no English and hadn't been told that they were meant to unpack the boxes taking everything out on to the floor. So they came back the next day and it was really hectic. It would have been easier if I had just done it myself, box by box, but as I would have had to get rid of the boxes myself this way then we just got on with it. Orla and Hamish were really excited about seeing their toys, and I caught Hamish trailing round behind one of the men holding his Wonderpets book aloft asking him to read it. It would have been much easier to do the unpacking without the kids, but Stevie sensibly chose to go to work leaving it to me.

So the place is a mess but I am slowly working my way through the various piles that are many and varied in all the rooms. We have spoken to our Relocation Service Provider (Heidi) about the fact that we have no hot water at all in the en-suite and only get a centimetre of hot water in the kitchen sink before it runs cold. Heidi, I have noticed can't be bothered to really help us or suffers from a strong strain of such negativity that were she to be psychometrically tested, there's no chance she'd be a match for this job.

I told her about the water in the kitchen and she told me that it might be just a 5 litre tank. I doubt whether we are getting 3 litres, and if that is the case then it's not even enough to wash the dishes, so how is that acceptable? Then she told us that there would be no chance of getting a parking permit because we still have the rental car, and that the local council would want us to wait and pay for parking for the next 8 weeks until our normal car gets delivered. I thought that was a load of rubbish, and Stevie ended up phoning work and asking them how they felt about paying for parking as we are ineligble for a permit, and all of a sudden, today we have a permit. Next on the list was the Kindergeld. It's like your child benefit, or family allowance if you like. Stevie will be paying German tax, but according to Heidi we would not be eligible for this as we are only here for 2 years on a temporary contract. Well, today we met some Americans in the swing park who have been here 3 weeks and are over doing fellowships. They won't be paying German tax - but yet they are entitled to both reduced Kita (nursery) fees and KinderGeld.

Finally, Heidi was round this morning and we had a disturbing chat about the tv. Part of the package is that we get a basic Sky package allowing us some British channels. I don't know, maybe in amongst me harping on about Robinson's juice, I may have mentioned, how much I am missing tv, and BBC World News is just not rocking my world that much. Anyway, she asked whether we were able to receive BBC World News through the tv. I said yes, but not even with a signal that you could describe as acceptable to watch or listen to. We then got on to the subject of when we might be getting the tv sorted out. To which she looked a bit surprised, so I explained that this was part of the deal (hey, that was the bit that had me sold on this whole idea). So she tells me that this is not possible, that we can't get this in Berlin. What? What rubbish more like. I reminded her that there are satellites which beam CBeebies all around the globe for people like me. So the next argument was that we would not be allowed a satellite dish on this building. I think we could get one behind the balcony at the front without it being seen by anyone. And if not, my new Canadian friends told me of a company that'll do you cable with British channels, plus phone and broadband. Sadly I have forgotten the name of this vital company as I was busy trying to remember the more important broadband login details.

So I am getting a bit fed up with Heidi. The tv was the thing that made me realise she just wants to do as little as possible for us. I'll wait and see what happens at the beginning of next week, and then maybe we'll nudge Rolls-Royce into making a 'MAKE IT HAPPEN!' phone call.

I've added a quick 'Let's touch the penguins' photo for you.